[6^0 —iSI 


250™  ANNIVERSARY 


OF    THE 


OF  THE  First  Constitution 


OF   THE 


STATE   OF   CONNECTICUT 


'/( 


r 


i2)irtfLilaLj  of  tKc  ^tate  of  Oonnectlcut. 


CELEBRATION 


TWO  HUNDRED  AND  FIFTIETH  ANNIVERSARY 


Adoption  of  the  First  Constitution 


STATE  OF  CONNECTICUT, 


Connecticut  Historical  Society  and  the  Towns  of  Windsor, 
Hartford,  and  Wethersfield, 


THURSDAY,  JANUARY   24x11,  A.  D.  1889. 


HARTFORD,   CONN.: 

Puui.isHED  ]!Y  The  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 
1889. 


The  Case,  lockwood  &  Brainard  Company 

PRINTERS    AND    BINDERS 

HARTFORD,    CONN. 


CONTENTS. 


Preliminary  Proceedings, 

Order  of  Exercises, 

Opening  Remarks  by  Hon,  Henry  Barnard 

Prayer  by  Rev.  G.  L.  Walker, 

Address  by  Hon.  Henry  Barnard, 

First  Constitution  of  Connecticut, 

Historical  Address  by  Rev.  J.  H.  Twichell, 

Benediction  by  Rev.  Francis  Goodwin, 

Evening  Exercises, 

Address  by  Hon.  H.  C.  Robinson, 

Hon.  John  Hooker, 

Hon.  John  H.  Perry,     . 

Hon.  Alfred  E.  Burr,  . 

Prof.  Albert  B.  Hart, 

Hon.  John  G.  Root, 

Hon.  Joseph  R.  Hawley, 
Letter  from  Edward  E.  Hale, 

Robert  C.  Winthrop,     . 

George  E.  Ellis, 

George  F.  Hoar, 

John  Bach  McMaster,   . 

D.  Williams  Patterson, 

Justin  Winsor,     . 

W.  S.  Shurtleff, 

Edward  Channing, 

Alexander  Johnston,     . 

Henry  B.  Harrison, 

Noah  Porter, 

George  Williamson  Smith, 

John  Williams,    . 

O.  H.  Platt, 

Charles  R.  Ingersoll,  . 

Richard  A.  Wheeler,    . 

John  M.  Hall,     . 


5 

9 

13 

14 

17 

20 
26 
54 
55 
57 
63 
73 
77 
84 

87 
89 

91 
91 
92 
92 
92 
93 
93 
93 
94 
95 

95 
96 

96 

96 

97 

97 

97 

98 


PRELIMINARY   PROCEEDINGS. 


The  first  action  of  the  Connecticut  Historical  Society  with  ref- 
erence to  the  celebration  of  the  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniver- 
sary of  the  adoption  of  the  first  Constitution  of  the  State  of  Con- 
necticut was  taken  on  the  third  day  of  January,  i8S8,  when,  upon 
motion  of  J.  F.  Morris,  it  was 

Voted,  That  a  committee  be  appointed  to  prepare  a  plan 
looking  to  the  celebration  of  the  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anni- 
versary of  the  establishment  of  the  first  Constitution  in  the 
Connecticut  Colony ;  which  anniversary  will  occur  in  January, 
1889  —  and  that  the  committee  shall  report  at  a  future  meeting. 

The  following  were  appointed  members  of  the  committee  :  J. 
H.  Trumbull,  J.  F,  Morris,  and  C.  J.  Hoadly. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Society  on  the  third  of  April,  1888, 
The  committee  appointed  to  consider  the  matter  of  a  celebra- 
tion of  the  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Constitution  of  Connecticut,  reported  through  Mr.  J. 
F.  Morris,  but  suggested  no  definite  plan.  After  discussion  by 
the  president,  Messrs.  Morris,  Hoadly,  Stedman,  and  Adams,  on 
motion,  it  was 

Voted,  That  S.  W.  Adams,  and  Jabez  H.  Hayden,  Esq.,  of  Wind- 
sor, be  added  to  the  committee,  and  that  it  be  instructed  to  prepare 
an  address  to  the  people  of  the  three  towns,  Windsor,  Wethers- 
field,  and  Hartford,  calling  their  attention  to  the  matter,  and 
asking  their  co-operation,  the  same  to  be  published  before  the 
next  meeting. 


6  PRELIMINARY    PROCEEDINGS. 

On  motion,  it  was 

Voted,  That  the  committee  be  requested  to  report  a  plan  for 
the  appointment  of  committees  to  make  arrangements  for  the 
celebration. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Society  on  the  first  of  May,  1888, 
Mr.  J.  F.  Morris  reported  for  the  committee  on  the  celebration 
of  the  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  establishment 
of  the  Constitution  in  Connecticut  colony;  and  said  that  so  far 
as  he  could  find  out,  the  towns  of  Windsor  and  Wethersfield 
would  be  willing  to  co-operate  with  Hartford  in  such  a  celebra- 
tion ;  but  in  what  way  or  to  what  extent,  he  was  not  prepared  to 
say.  The  committee  were  considering  as  the  first,  perhaps,  and 
very  necessary  thing  to  be  done,  the  selection  of  an  orator ;  no 
one  had  been  chosen.  The  day  settled  upon  is  January  24,  1889. 
The  report  was  accepted,  the  committee  continued,  and  asked 
to  report  progress  at  a  future  meeting. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Society  on  the  eighth  of  January,  1889, 
the  following  matter  was  brought  forward  in  some  remarks  by 
J.  F.  Morris.     John  W.  Stedman  presented  this  resolution  : 

Whereas,  It  is  deemed  proper  by  the  Connecticut  Historical 
Society,  acting  in  its  corporate  capacity,  to  celebrate  in  a 
becoming  manner  the  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of 
the  establishment  of  a  State  Constitution,  in  the  town  of  Hart- 
ford, by  the  settlers  in  the  Valley  of  the  Connecticut,  therefore 

Resolved,  That  be  appointed  a  committee 

of  this  society,  empowered  to  make  all  the  necessary  arrange- 
ments for  such  a  celebration  as  in  their  judgment  may  be  appro- 
priate, and  advertise  the  same  in  the  public  press  of  the  State. 

Mr.  Morris  offered  a  verbal  report  from  the  committee  appointed 
at  the  January  meeting,  1888.  He  said  they  had  eventually  agreed 
to  have  a  quiet  celebration  consisting  of  literary  exercises,  with 
an  address  by  Rev.  Joseph  H.  Twichell,  in  some  church  or  public 
hall  on  the  24th  inst. 


PRELIMINARY    PROCEEDINGS.  7 

The  resolution  was  passed,  and  on  motion  the  President  ap- 
pointed the  following  committee  : 

Messrs.  John  W.  Stedman  (Chairman),  Jonathan  F.  Morris, 
Charles  J.  Hoadly,  Jabez  H.  Hayden  (of  Windsor  Locks), 
Sherman  W.  Adams,  Charles  Hopkins  Clark,  and  Edward  D. 
Robbins  (of  Wethersfield),  with  power  to  add  to  their  number. 

At  the  first  meeting,  Mr.  Frank  B.  Gay  was  chosen  Secretary, 
and  Mr.  C.  H.  Clark  desiring  to  be  excused,  Mr.  Stephen  A.  Hub- 
bard was  appointed  in  his  place. 

The  general  committee  had  frequent  sessions.  At  their  third 
meeting  they  were  joined  by  the  following  committee,  appointed 
to  co-operate  with  the  Society,  by  the  General  Assembly  of  the 
State : 

Hon.  S.  E.  Merwin,  Lieut.-Governor ;  Hons.  John  M,  Hall  and 
E.  S.  Cleveland,  on  the  part  of  the  Senate ;  Hon.  John  H.  Perry, 
Speaker ;  Hons.  W.  B.  Glover  and  Frank  E.  Hyde,  on  the  part 
of  the  House  of  Representatives. 

The  following  committees  were  assigned  to  carry  out  the 
detailed  plans  of  the  celebration,  after  the  time  and  place  for 
holding  the  same  had  been  fixed  upon,  and  the  orator  selected  : 

On  Invitation.  —  J.  Hammond  Trumbull  and  John  W.  Stedman. 

On  Programme  of  Exercises. — J.  Hammond  Trumbull,  J.  F. 
Morris,  S.  A.  Hubbard,  and  S.  W.  Adams. 

On  Co-operation  with  the  Towns. — J.  H.  Hayden,  J.  F.  Morris, 
S.  W.  Adams,  and  C.  J.  Hoadly. 

On  Reception.  —  Dr.  W.  A.  M.  VVainwright,  Dr.  Gurdon  W. 
Russell,  Rev.  Francis  Goodwin,  James  G.  Batterson,  Samuel 
Hart,  D.D.,  Dr.  E.  K.  Hunt,  Rowland  Swift,  Charles  B.  Whiting, 
W.  H.  Gross,  Stephen  Terry,  Charles  R.  Chapman,  and  Charles 
H.  Clark. 

On  Seating  the  Guests.  —  J.  G.  Rathbun,  with  power  to  appoint 
his  assistants. 

Representatives  of  the  Magistrates  and  Deputies  of  the  first 
General  Court.  —  John  Hooker,  Rev.  Francis  Goodwin,  Thomas 


8  PRELIMINARY    PROCEEDINGS. 

\V.  Loomis,  Rev.  Dr.  Thomas  R.  Pyncheon,  Henry  C.  Robinson, 
Dr.  Pinckney  W.  Ellsworth,  Timothy  S.  Phelps,  Roger  Welles, 
Jonathan  F.  Morris,  James  C.  Pratt,  Charles  J.  Hoadly,  Alfred 
E.  Burr,  Jabez  H.  Hayden,  H.  Sidney  Hayden,  Horace  Bower, 
John  A.  Stoughton,  Silas  W.  Robbins,  Sherman  W.  Adams, 
Stephen  A.  Hubbard,  Elizur  S.  Goodrich,  Winthrop  Buck. 

Selectmen.  —  Horace  H.  Ellsworth,  George  W.  Hodge,  Fredus 
M.  Case,  for  Windsor;  George  W.  Fowler,  Thomas  J.  Blake,  W. 
Westphal,  William  Berry,  Ralph  Foster,  for  Hartford;  Josiah  G. 
Adams,  Edwin  F.  Griswold,  Willis  W.  Standish,  for  Wdhersjield. 


[Programmk  ok  TiiF.  Skuvicf.s.] 

1639.  1889- 

ORDER  OF  EXERCISES 


(sefe6ration 


§099(^etieut  Historieal  ^oei^^ty 


Towns  of  Wmdsor,  Hartford,  and  Wethersficid, 


FIRST  CONSTITUTION  OF  CONNECTICUT, 

[Adopted  January  14,  1639,  (O.  S.)  ] 

Held  in  Hartford,  January  24,  1889. 


10  25OTH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE 


EXERCISES  AT  THE  FIRST  CHURCH. 


Voluntary  —  Organ. 

UR.   N.   H.   ALLEN. 

Anthem  —  Pilgrim's  Chorus,  Verdi. 

"  From  afar,  gracious  Lord,  Thou  did'st  gather  Thy  flock." 

Prayer  — 

rev.  george  leon  walker,  d.d. 

Address  — 

By  Hon.  HENRY  BARNARD,  LL.D.,  Senior  Vice-President 
of  the  Society. 

[President   of  the    Day,   in   the   absence  of   Hon.    J.    Hammond  Trumbull, 
President  of  the   Society.] 

Music. 

Reading   of   the   Constitution  of   Connecticut, 
adopted  1639, 

By   His   E.vcellency   MORGAN   G.   BULKELEY, 
Governor   of  Connecticut. 

Hymn —  Leonard  Bacon,  D.D. 

HYMN,    L.    M. 

OGOD  !  beneath  thy  guiding  hand 
Our  exiled  fatliers  crossed  the  sea; 
And,  when  they  trod  the  wintry  strand, 

With  prayer  and  praise  they  worshiped  thee. 

Thou  heard'st,  well  pleased,  the  song,  the  prayer  ; 

Thy  blessing  came,  and  still  its  power 
Shall  onward  through  all  ages  bear 

The  memory  of  that  holy  hour. 


CONNECTICUT    HISTORICAL    SOCIETY.  I  I 

What  change !  through  pathless  wilds  no  more 

The  fierce  and  naked  savage  roams  1 
Sweet  praise  along  the  cultured  shore 

Breaks  from  ten  thousand  happy  homes. 

Laws,  freedom,  truth,  and  faith  in  God 

Came  with  these  exiles  o'er  the  waves ; 
And,  where  their  pilgrim  feet  have  trod, 

The  God  they  trusted  guards  their  graves. 

And  hear  thy  name,  O  God  of  love  ! 

Thy  children's  children  shall  adore 
'Till  these  eternal  hills  remove. 

And  Spring  adorns  the  earth  no  more  ! 

Historical  Address —  • 

REV.   JOSEPH    HOPKINS   TWICHELL. 
Hymn  —  Psalm  Ixxviii.  Isaac    Watts,  D.D. 

HYMN,   C.   M. 

LET  children  hear  the  mighty  deeds 
Which  God  performed  of  old : 
Which  in  our  younger  years  we  heard, 
And  which  our  fathers  told. 

Our  lips  shall  tell  them  to  our  sons. 

And  they  again  to  theirs, 
That  generations  yet  unborn 

May  teach  them  to  their  heirs. 

Thus  shall  they  learn  in  God  alone 

Their  hope  serenely  stands ; 
That  they  may  ne'er  forget  His  works, 

But  practice  His  commands. 

doxology. 
Benediction  — 

REV.  FRANCIS  GOODWIN. 


12  250T1I    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 


EVENING    EXERCISES 


eKcaiLeiTLLj   o^    Mui^^ic. 


1.  Overture, 

2.  Address, 

3.  Address, 

4.  Address, 

5.  Address, 

6.  Address, 

7.  Address, 

8.  Address, 


By  Colt's  Band. 

By  Hon.   Henry  C.  Robinson. 

By  John  Hooker,  Esq. 

By  Hon.  John  H.  Perry. 

By  Hon.  Alfred  E.  Burr. 

By  Prof.  Albert  B.   Hart. 

By  Mayor  John  G.  Root. 

By  Senator  J.  R.  Hawley. 


9.     Announcement  of  Letters  of  Regret. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION. 


EXERCISES    AT   THE    CHURCH. 


OPENING  REMARKS. 

BY  THE  HON.    HENRY    BARNARD, 

(Presiding  officer  of  the  occasion). 


We  meet  to-day  on  the  invitation  and  under  the  auspices 
of  the  Connecticut  Historical  Society,  to  mark  by  suitable 
exercises  the  fifth  jubilee  —  the  250th  anniversary  of  the 
foundation  of  this  public  State  or  Commonwealth,  and  to 
bring  into  fresh  remembrance  the  wisdom  and  virtues  of  the 
founders  and  the  grandeur  of  their  work.  In  the  printed 
programme  of  the  committee,  our  proceedings  begin  and  end 
with  sacred  song  and  prayer.  And  now,  it  is  at  once  our 
privilege  and  our  duty,  in  this  edifice,  the  fifth  direct 
architectural  succession  of  the  first  meeting-house,  erected 
by  the  town  for  the  worshiping  of  Almighty  God,  and  for 
such  public  assemblages  as  the  common  weal  might  summon 
—  near  the  spot  where  the  founders  were  buried  more  than 
two  hundred  years  ago  —  in  this  hour,  and  with  these  sur- 
roundings, it  is  our  privilege  to  have  our  devotions  led  by 
the  pastor  of  this  church. 


14  25OTH    AXNIVKKSARY    OF    Till':    ADOPTION    OF 


PRAYER 


%. 


BY  THE  REV.  GEORGE  LEON  WALKER,  D.D., 

(Pastor  of  the  First  Churcli.) 

Almighty  God,  our  Heavenly  Father,  Thou  art  our  God, 
and  we  will  praise  Thee;  our  Fathers*  God  and  we  will 
exalt  Thee.  We  would  abundantly  utter  the  menfiry  of 
Thy  great  goodness  and  would  sing  of  Thy  righteousness. 

We  humbly  beseech  Thee,  from  the  throne  of  Thy  glory, 
to  behold  with  favor  this  assembly  of  Thy  people  now  gath- 
ered before  Thee.  We  meet  here  to  recount  the  mercies 
Thou  hast  showed  unto  us,  and  to  those  who  have  gone  be- 
fore us,  in  this  land  of  our  pleasant  habitation.  Especially 
do  we  desire  to  give  thanks  unto  Thee  for  the  great  benefits 
ministered  unto  us  through  the  lives  and  the  deeds  of  the 
founders,  on  this  soil,  of  the  civil  and  religious  institutions 
here  established.  We  bless  thee  that  thou  didst  put  it  into 
the  hearts  of  our  fathers  to  forsake  the  land  of  their  birth, 
and  to  come  across  the  great  waters  into  the  wilderness,  to 
plant  here  a  free  and  godly  commonwealth. 

We  thank  Thee  for  the  courage  and  the  patience  with 
which  they  endured  the  hardships  and  overcame  the  ob- 
stacles belonging  to  this  high  endeavor. 

We  praise  thee  for  the  foresight  with  which  they  planned  ; 
for  the  wisdom  with  which  they  labored ;  for  the  steadfast- 
ness with  which  they  suffered.  We  thank  Thee  for  the 
example  we  have  in  their  history  of  Thy  oft-time  way  of 
working,  wherein  Thou  dost  take  the  weak  things  of  the 
world  to  confound  the  things  that  are  mighty,  and  dost  bring 
about  Thy  divinest  purposes  through  the  instrumentality  of 
the  lowly  and  such  as  seem  to  have  no  strength. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST  CONSTITUTION,  I  5 

Peculiarly  do  wc  praise  Thee,  at  this  time,  for  the  memory 
of  Thy  servant  of  this  plantation's  earliest  day  —  leader  of 
a  pilgrim  company  to  this  spot  —  unto  whom  it  was  given  by 
Thy  good  spirit  resting  upon  him,  so  largely  to  outline  and 
shape  the  fabric  of  this  government  under  which  we  live. 
We  bless  Thee  that  thou  didst  take  him,  as  it  were,  from  the 
sheepfolds,  from  following  the  ewes  great  with  young,  and 
brought  him  to  feed  Jacob  Thy  people,  and  Israel  Thine  in- 
heritance. We  thank  thee  for  the  great  bestowment  and 
grace  dowered  upon  us,  and  upon  the  people  of  our  whole 
land,  through  him  and  through  those  of  wise  and  understand- 
ing hearts  whom  Thou  didst  associate  with  him,  in  the  es- 
tablishment of  this  Christian  State.  We  lift  up  our  souls  in 
gratitude  for  the  many,  in  the  successive  generations  since 
that  far-off  day,  who  have  lived  in  the  enjoyment  of  the 
privileges  here  made  common  to  all  ;  who  have  labored  for 
their  perpetuity,  or  have  died  in  their  defence. 

And  now  we  beseech  Thee  that  we,  upon  whom  these 
blessings  have  come,  may  not  be  unmindful  of  the  obligations 
these  favors  have  laid  upon  us.  Make  us  worthy  to  be  the 
successors  and  inheritors  of  those  of  whom,  in  their  day,  the 
world  was  so  little  worthy.  May  the  goodly  possession  we 
have  received  as  a  legacy  of  piety  and  truth  from  their  hands 
be  transmitted  unimpaired  to  those  who  shall  come  after  us. 

To  this  end  God  bless  our  commonwealth  with  prosperity 
and  peace.  Let  Thy  favor  rest  upon  its  governor,  its  judges, 
and  the  framers  of  its  laws.  Let  all  who  are  in  places  of 
authority  remember  that  they  are  in  trust  for  Thee  and  for 
those  who  have  appointed  them.  Let  all  the  inhabitants 
learn  righteousness. 

Regard  with  eminent  favor  our  churches,  that  pure  relig- 
ion may  prevail  among  us;  our  schools  of  learning,  that 
knowledge  may  be  disseminated  and  increased ;  our  institu- 
tions of  benevolence,  that  the  sufferings  of  disease  and 
poverty  may  be  removed  or  lightened  of  the  heaviest  of  their 
burden. 

Establish  Thy  covenant  witli  our  children,  that  the  gener- 


l6  25OTII    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

ation  which  is  to  come  may  know  Thee,  and  forget  not  the 
works  of  God,  but  keep  his  commandments. 

Above  all,  help  us  with  one  mind  to  remember  that  we 
are  but  strangers  and  sojourners  here,  even  as  our  fathers 
were.  Be  Thou  with  us  as  Thou  wast  with  them,  strengthen- 
ing for  all  present  duty,  and  aiding  in  every  forward  look  of 
faith  and  hope.  Lead  us,  O  Shepherd  of  Israel,  through  all 
the  pilgrimage  of  this  earthly  life,  and  gather  us  at  the  end 
in  the  one  fold  of  the  holy  on  high  :  All  which  petitions 
we  present  in  His  name,  who  ever  lives  to  make  intercession 
for  us  —  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord.     Amen. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  1/ 


ADDRESS. 

BY  HON.  HENRY  BARNARD, 

(From  the  Hartford  Coiirant's  Report,  January  25111.) 

After  extending  a  welcome  in  behalf  of  the  society,  to  the 
chief  magistrate  and  officers  of  the  State,  to  the  representa- 
tives of  the  original  Connecticut,  and  of  the  now  larger  State, 
and  to  the  children  of  the  citizens  who  went  out  from  the 
original  State  and  had  returned  to  this  gathering.  Dr.  Bar- 
nard said  : 

Two  hundred  and  seventy  years  ago  the  first  New  England 
settlement  was  made  on  the  rock  of  Plymouth. 

Two  hundred  and  sixty  years  ago  the  settlements  had  so 
increased  on  the  borders  of  Massachusetts  Bay  that  the  new- 
comers found  neither  room  for  their  herds  nor  homes.  They 
asked  permission  of  the  authorities  to  move  to  the  westward. 

Two  hundred  and  fifty  years  only,  or  a  little  more,  have 
transpired  since  the  first  settlement  was  made  on  the  banks 
of  the  Connecticut.  The  settlers  came  with  their  horses 
and  cattle,  their  implements  and  their  arms,  their  household 
goods,  and  all  the  necessaries  of  life.  The  settlements  at 
Watertowne,  Dorchester,  and  Newtowne,  were  founded,  to 
be  soon  changed  to  Wethersfield,  Windsor,  and  Hartford. 
Then,  without  permission  of  colony  or  mother  country,  they 
met  in  council,  and  formed  a  Constitution  under  the  princi- 
ples laid  down  by  Hooker  in  a  sermon  preached  to  his  con- 
gregation the  year  before,  and  which,  after  the  lapse  of  more 
than  two  hundred  years,  was  rescued  from  oblivion  by  the 
philological  insight  of  our  learned  president,  Dr.  Trumbull. 
This  convention  was  held  in  the  meeting-house,  as  it  was 
called,  of  the  First  Church  of  Christ,  in  Hartford.  There 
3 


l8  25OTII    ANNIVKKSAKY    OF    THE     AnOI'TION'    OF 

they  adopted  the  first  written  ordinance  of  ;:jovernment,  in 
what  they  called  its  Fundamental  Orders,  till  then  without 
the  name  of  Constitution,  in  history.  This  Constitution 
was  not  a  consolidation  of  these  towns,  nor  was  it  simply  a 
union,  but  rather  a  democracy  of  towns  and  people.  But 
while  it  recognized  the  organization  of  the  towns,  it  also 
recognized  the  people  as  represented  by  magistrates  and 
delegates  of  their  own  choice. 

For  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  our  fathers  were  so  busy 
making  history  that  they  forgot  to  preserve  and  look  after 
its  monuments,  except  to  preserve  the  records  of  the  town 
meetings,  the  courts,  and  matters  of  legislation  ;  but  not  re- 
flecting that  these  records  might  be  destroyed,  they  did  not 
entrust  them  to  that  art  preservative  of  all  arts  —  printing. 
Hence  it  was  found  by  our  own  governor  (Trumbull),  when 
he  had  occasion  to  look  up  some  records,  that  some  of  the 
links  were  missing.  This  led  him  to  ask  power  from  the 
legislature  to  provide  for  the  collection  and  preservation  of 
such  records  and  other  materials  of  history. 

About  this  time  one  of  our  own  citizens  (Webster)  made 
the  discovery  of  an  early  history  of  Massachusetts  (Win- 
throp's),  and  through  his  efforts  it  was  committed  to  the  press. 
At  nearly  the  same  time  the  Historical  Society  of  Massa- 
chusetts was  founded,  and  into  this  society  all  these  docu- 
ments, in  some  thirty  volumes  of  the  Trumbull  papers,  passed, 
and  became  the  property  of  a  sister  State.  At  about  this 
date  also  Timothy  Dwight,  president  of  Yale  college,  added 
to  the  ordinary  objects  of  a  scientific  society  that  of  collect- 
ing the  history  of  the  towns  of  Connecticut.  About  a  half 
century  later,  through  the  exertions  of  two  or  three  men, 
the  original  Connecticut  Historical  Society  was  formed,  but 
its  action  was  soon  discontinued  by  the  accidental  dispersion 
of  two  or  three  of  its  members;  and  it  was  not  till  1839  that 
a  few  of  our  citizens  organized  this  society  for  the  work  of 
historical  discussion,  research,  and  collection. 

If  we  act  out  to  the  full  circumference  of  our  duty  to  the 
present ;  if  we  provide  institutions  of  learning  of  every  grade ; 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  I9 

if  we  perfect  our  scliools,  and  universities,  and  libraries,  and 
thus  give  means  of  universal  development  ;  if  we  purify  the 
politics  and  jiolitical  institutions  of  to-day  ;  we  shall  in  real- 
ity work  for  the  prosperity  of  all  future  generations.  We 
cannot  better  anticipate  their  wants  than  by  a  wise  provision 
for  our  own.  And  then  having  completed  our  duties,  we 
may  welcome  them  in  their  long  succession  in  the  language 
of  Webster,  which  has  come  echoing  down  to  us  through 
seventy  years : 

"  Advance  then,  ye  future  generations  !  We  would  hail 
you  as  you  rise  in  your  long  succession,  to  fill  the  places 
which  we  now  fill,  and  to  taste  the  blessings  of  existence 
where  we  are  passing,  and  soon  shall  have  passed  our  own 
human  duration.  We  bid  you  welcome  to  this  pleasant  land 
of  the  fathers.  We  bid  you  welcome  to  the  healthful  skies 
and  the  verdant  fields  of  New  England.  We  greet  your 
accession  to  the  great  inheritance  which  we  have  enjoyed. 
We  welcome  you  to  the  blessings  of  good  government  and 
religious  liberty.  W^e  welcome  you  to  the  treasures  of 
science  and  the  delights  of  learning.  We  welcome  you  to 
the  transcendent  sweets  of  domestic  life,  to  the  happiness  of 
kindred,  and  parents, and  children.  We  welcome  you  to  the 
immeasurable  blessings  of  rational  existence,  the  immortal 
hope  of  Christianity,  and  the  light  of  everlasting  truth  !  " 


20  250TH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 


©Jfte5Jirx^'t'©oQx^'ri'ru'rioa  of  ©oaaec'Ticu'r. 

READ   BY   HIS   EXCELLENCY, 

MORGAN  G.  BULKELEY, 

Governor  of   Connecticut. 


The  "Fundamental  Orders;"  1638-9.  . 

THE  FIRST  CONNECTICUT  CONSTITUTION. 

Forasmuch  as  it  hath  pleased  the  Almighty  God  by  the 
wise  disposition  of  his  divine  providence  so  to  order  and  dis- 
pose of  things  that  we  the  Inhabitants  and  Residents  of 
Windsor,  Hartford,  and  Wethersfield  are  now  cohabiting  and 
dwelling  in  and  upon  the  River  of  Connectecotte  and  the 
lands  thereunto  adjoining  ;  and  well  knowing  where  a  peo- 
ple are  gathered  together  the  word  of  God  requires  that  to 
maintain  the  peace  and  union  of  such  a  people  there  should 
be  an  orderly  and  decent  Government  established  according 
to  God,  to  order  and  dispose  of  the  affairs  of  the  people  at 
all  seasons  as  occasion  shall  require;  do  therefore  associate 
and  conjoin  ourselves  to  be  as  one  Public  State  or  Common- 
wealth ;  and  do  for  ourselves  and  our  Successors  and  such 
as  shall  be  adjoined  to  us  at  any  time  hereafter,  enter  into 
Combination  and  Confederation  together,  to  maintain  and 
preserve  the  liberty  and  purity  of  the  Gospel  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  which  we  now  profess,  as  also  the  discipline  of  the 
Churches,  which  according  to  the  truth  of  the  said  Gospel 
is   now  practiced  amongst  us  ;  as  also  in  our  Civil  Affairs  to 


COXNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  21 

be  guided  and  governed  according  to  such  Laws,  Rules, 
Orders,  and  Decrees  as  shall  be  made,  ordered,  and  decreed, 
as  followeth  :  — 

1.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced,  and  decreed,  that  there  shall 
be  yearly  two  General  Assemblies  or  Courts,  the  one  the 
second  Thursday  in  April,  the  other  the  second  Thursday 
in  September  following ;  the  first  shall  be  called  the  Court 
of  Election,  wherein  shall  be  yearly  chosen  from  time  to 
time  so  many  Magistrates  and  other  public  Officers  as  shall 
be  found  requisite :  Whereof  one  to  be  chosen  Governor 
for  the  year  ensuing  and  until  another  be  chosen,  and  no 
other  Magistrate  to  be  chosen  for  more  than  one  year  ;  pro- 
vided always,  there  be  six  chosen  besides  the  Governor, 
which  being  chosen  and  sworn  according  to  an  Oath 
recorded  for  that  purpose,  shall  have  power  to  administer 
justice  according  to  the  Laws  here  established,  and  for  want 
thereof,  according  to  the  rule  of  the  Word  of  God  ;  which 
choice  shall  be  made  by  all  that  are  admitted  freemen  and 
have  taken  the  Oath  of  Fidelity,  and  do  cohabit  within 
this  Jurisdiction  (having  been  admitted  Inhabitants  by  the 
major  part  of  the  Town  wherein  they  live)*  or  the  major 
part  of  such  as  shall  be  then  present. 

2.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced,  and  decreed,  that  the  Elec- 
tion of  the  aforesaid  Magistrates  shall  be  on  this  manner : 
every  person  present  and  qualified  for  choice  shall  bring  in 
(to  the  persons  deputed  to  receive  them)  one  single  paper 
with  the  name  of  him  written  in  it  whom  he  desires  to  have 
Governor,  and  he  that  hath  the  greatest  number  of  papers 
shall  be  Governor  for  that  year.  And  the  rest  of  the  Mag- 
istrates or  public  Officers  to  be  chosen  in  this  manner :  the 
Secretary  for  the  time  being  shall  first  read  the  names  of 
all  that  are  to  be  put  to  choice  and  then  shall  severally  nom- 
inate them  distinctly,  and  every  one  that  would  have  the 
person  nominated  to  be  chosen  shall  bring  in  one  single 

*  This  clause  was  interlined  in  a  different  handwriting  and  is  of  a  later  date. 
It  was  adopted  by  the  General  Court  of  November,  1643. 


22  25OTII    AX\I\'I:KSARV    OI'-    I'IIE    ADoI'TIOX    of 

paper  wiiltcn  upon,  and  he  that  would  not  have  liim  chosen 
shall  l)ring-  in  a  blank :  and  every  one  that  hath  more 
written  papers  than  blanks  shall  be  a  Magistrate  for  that 
year  ;  which  jiapers  shall  be  received  and  told  by  one  or 
more  that  shnll  be  then  chosen  by  the  court  and  sworn  to 
be  faithful  therein  ;  but  in  case  there  should  not  be  six 
chosen  as  aforesaid,  besides  the  Governor,  out  of  those 
which  are  nominated,  then  he  or  they  which  have  the  most 
written  papers  shall  be  a  Magistrate  or  Magistrates  for  the 
ensuing  year,  to  make  up  the  aforesaid  number. 

3.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced,  and  decreed,  that  the  Secre- 
tary shall  not  nominate  any  person,  nor  shall  any  person  be 
chosen  newly  into  the  Magistracy,  which  was  not  propounded 
in  some  General  Court  before,  to  be  nominated  the  next 
Election  ;  and  to  that  end  it  shall  be  lawful  for  each  of  the 
Towns  aforesaid  by  their  deputies  to  nominate  any  two 
whom  they  conceive  fit  to  be  put  to  election ;  and  the  Court 
may  add  so  many  more  as  they  judge  requisite. 

4.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced,  and  decreed,  that  no  person 
be  chosen  Governor  above  once  in  two  years,  and  that  the 
Governor  be  always  a  member  of  some  approved  congrega- 
tion, and  formerly  of  the  Magistracy  within  this  Jurisdic- 
tion ;  and  all  the  Magistrates,  Freemen  of  this  Common- 
wealth :  and  that  no  Magistrate  or  other  public  ofificer  shall 
execute  any  part  of  his  or  their  office  before  they  arc  sev- 
erally sworn,  which  shall  be  done  in  the  face  of  the  court  if 
they  be  present,  and  in  case  of  absence  by  some  deputed  for 
that  purpose. 

5.  It*  is  Ordered,  sentenced,  and  decreed,  that  to  the 
aforesaid  Court  of  Election  the  several  Towns  shall  send 
their  deputies,  and  when  the  Elections  arc  ended  they  may 
proceed  in  any  public  service  as  at  other  Courts.  Also  the 
other  General  Court  in  September  shall  be  for  making  of 
laws,  and  any  other  public  occasion,  which  concerns  the 
good  of  the  Commonwealth. 

6.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced,  and  decreed,  that  the  Gov- 
ernor shall,  either  by  himself  or  by  the  secretary,  send  out 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  23 

summons  to  the  constables  of  every  Town  for  the  calling 
of  these  two  standing  Courts,  one  montli  at  least  before 
their  several  times :  And  also  if  the  Governor  and  the 
greatest  part  of  the  Magistrates  see  cause  upon  any  special 
occasion  to  call  a  General  Court,  they  may  give  order  to  the 
Secretary  so  to  do  within  fourteen  days'  warning  :  and  if 
urgent  necessity  so  require,  upon  a  shorter  notice,  giving 
sufficient  grounds  for  it  to  the  deputies  when  they  meet,  or 
else  be  questioned  for  the  same;  And  if  the  Gox-crnor  and 
major  part  of  Magistrates  shall  either  neglect  or  refuse  to 
call  the  two  General  standing  Courts  or  either  of  them,  as 
also  at  other  times  when  the  occasions  of  the  Common- 
wealth require,  the  Freemen  thereof,  or  the  major  part  of 
them,  shall  petition  to  them  so  to  do  ;  if  then  it  be  either 
denied  or  neglected,  the  said  Freemen,  or  the  major  part  of 
them,  shall  have  power  to  give  order  to  the  Constables  of 
the  several  Towns  to  do  the  same,  and  so  may  meet 
together,  and  choose  to  themselves  a  Moderator,  and  may 
proceed  to  do  any  act  of  power  which  any  other  General 
Court  may. 

7.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced,  and  decreed,  that  after  there 
are  warrants  given  out  for  any  of  the  said  General  Courts, 
the  Constable  or  Constables  of  each  Town  shall  forthwith 
give  notice  distinctly  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  same,  in  some 
public  assembly  or  by  going  or  sending  from  house  to  house, 
that  at  a  place  or  time  by  him  or  them  limited  and  set,  they 
meet  and  assemble  themselves  together  to  elect  and  choose 
certain  deputies  to  be  at  the  General  Court  then  following 
to  agitate  the  affairs  of  the  Commonwealth  ;  which  said 
deputies  shall  be  chosen  by  all  that  are  admitted  Inhabitants 
in  the  several  Towns  and  have  taken  the  oath  of  fidelity ; 
provided  that  none  be  chosen  a  Deputy  for  any  General 
Court  which  is  not  a  Freeman  of  this  Commonwealth. 

The  aforesaid  deputies  shall  be  chosen  in  manner  follow, 
ing  :  every  person  that  is  present  and  qualified  as  befoie 
expressed,  shall  bring  the  names  of  such,  written  in  several 
l)apL,'rs,  as  they  desire  to  have  chosen  for  that  employment. 


24  250TH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THK    ADOl'TION    OF 

and  those  three  or  four,  more  or  less,  being  the  number 
agreed  on  to  be  chosen  for  that  time,  that  have  greatest 
number  of  papers  written  for  them  shall  be  deputies  for  that 
Court ;  whose  names  shall  be  endorsed  on  the  back  side  of 
the  warrant  and  returned  into  the  Court,  with  the  constable 
or  constables'  hand  unto  the  same. 

8.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced,  and  decreed,  that  Windsor, 
Hartford,  and  VVethersfield  shall  have  power,  each  Town,  to 
send  four  of  their  Freemen  as  their  deputies  to  every  Gen- 
eral Court ;  and  whatsoever  other  Towns  shall  be  hereafter 
added  to  this  Jurisdiction,  they  shall  send  so  many  deputies 
as  the  Court  shall  judge  meet,  a  reasonable  proportion  to 
the  number  of  Freemen  that  are  in  the  said  Towns  being  to 
be  attended  therein  ;  which  deputies  shall  have  the  power  of 
the  whole  Town  to  give  their  votes  and  allowance  to  all  such 
laws  and  orders  as  may  be  for  the  public  good,  and  unto 
which  the  said  towns  are  to  be  bound. 

9.  It  is  Ordered  and  decreed,  that  the  deputies  thus 
chosen  shall  have  power  and  liberty  to  appoint  a  time  and 
a  place  of  meeting  together  before  any  General  Court,  to 
advise  and  consult  of  all  such  things  as  may  concern  the 
good  of  the  public,  as  also  to  examine  their  own  Elections, 
whether  according  to  the  order,  and  if  they  or  the  greatest 
part  of  them  find  any  election  to  be  illegal  they  may  seclude 
such  for  present  from  their  meeting,  and  return  the  same 
and  their  reasons  to  the  Court ;  and  if  it  prove  true,  the 
Court  may  fine  the  party  or  parties  so  intruding,  and  the 
Town,  if  they  see  cause,  and  give  out  a  warrant  to  go  to  a 
new  election  in  a  legal  way,  either  in  part  or  in  whole.  Also 
the  said  deputies  shall  have  power  to  fine  any  that  shall  be 
disorderly  at  their  meetings,  or  for  not  coming  in  due 
time  or  place  according  to  appointment ;  and  they  may  re- 
turn the  said  fines  into  the  Court  if  it  be  refused  to  be  paid, 
and  the  Treasurer  to  take  notice  of  it,  and  to  escheat  or  levy 
the  same  as  he  does  other  fines. 

10.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced,  and  decreed,  that  every 
General  Court,  except   such  as  through  neglect  of  the  Gov- 


Connecticut's  first  constitution.  25 

ernor  and  the  greatest  part  of  Magistrates  the  Freemen  them- 
selves do  call,  shall  consist  of  the  Governor,  or  some  one 
chosen  to  moderate«the  Court,  and  four  other  Magistrates  at 
least,  with  the  major  part  of  the  deputies  of  the  several 
Towns  legally  chosen ;  and  in  case  the  Freemen,  or  major 
part  of  them,  through  neglect  or  refusal  of  the  Governor 
and  major  part  of  the  Magistrates,  shall  call  a  Court,  it  shall 
consist  of  the  major  part  of  Freemen  that  are  present  or 
their  deputies,  with  a  Moderator  chosen  by  them :  In 
which  said  General  Courts  shall  consist  the  supreme  power 
of  the  Commonwealth,  and  they  only  shall  have  power  to 
make  laws  or  repeal  them,  to  grant  levies,  to  admit  of  Free- 
men, dispose  of  lands  undisposed  of,  to  several  Towns  or 
persons,  and  also  shall  have  power  to  call  either  court  or 
Magistrate  or  any  other  person  whatsoever  into  question  for 
any  misdemeanor,  and  may  for  just  causes  displace  or  deal 
otherwise  according  to  the  nature  of  the  offence ;  and  also 
may  deal  in  any  other  matter  that  concerns  the  good  of  this 
Commonwealth,  except  election  of  Magistrates,  which  shall 
be  done  by  the  whole  body  of  Freemen. 

In  which  Court  the  Governor  or  Moderator  shall  have 
power  to  order  the  Court,  to  give  liberty  of  speech,  and 
silence  unseasonable  and  disorderly  speakings,  to  put  all 
things  to  vote,  and  in  case  the  vote  be  equal  to  have  the 
casting  voice.  But  none  of  these  Courts  shall  be  adjourned 
or  dissolved  without  the  consent  of  the  major  part  of  the 
Court. 

1 1.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced,  and  decreed,  that  when  any 
General  Court  upon  the  occasions  of  the  Commonwealth 
have  agreed  upon  any  sum  or  sums  of  money  to  be  levied 
upon  the  several  Towns  within  this  Jurisdiction,  that  a 
committee  be  chosen  to  set  out  and  appoint  what  shall  be 
the  proportion  of  every  Town  to  pay  of  the  said  levy,  pro- 
vided the  committee  be  made  up  of  an  equal  number  out 
of  each  Town. 

14th  January,   1638    [N.  S.,  24th  January,  1639],  the   11 
Orders  abovesaid  arc  voted. 
4 


26  250TII    .\NXI\  r.RSARY    OF    TUT.    ADOPTION'    OF 


HISTORICAL  ADDRESS. 

BY   THE    REV.    JOSEPH    H.    TWICHELL. 

Mr.  President;  Gentlemen  of  the  Connecticut  Historical  Society; 
Your  E.xcellency  ;  Honorable  Members  ok  the  Senate  and 
House  of  Representatives;  and  Fellow-Citizens: 

Two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  to-day  there  were  assem- 
bled in  this  town  a  company  of  men,  probably  somewhat 
above  two  hundred  in  number,  the  same  being  the  body 
of  the  male  adults  of  the  three  plantations  of  Wethersfield, 
Windsor,  and  Hartford,  constituting  the  Connecticut  Colony, 
then  less  than  three  years  old.  To  this  gathering,  plodding 
along  the  miry  or  snowy  paths,  on  foot  most  of  them, 
among  those  who  came  up  from  Wethersfield,  with  Magis- 
trates Andrew  Ward  and  William  Swain,  were  men  of 
the  not  unfamiliar  names  of  Foote,  Adams,  Goodrich,  Mitch- 
ell, Hubbard,  Sherman,  Robbins  ;  and  among  those  coming 
down  from  Windsor,  with  Pastor  Warham  and  Magistrates 
William  Phelps  and  Rodger  Ludlow  (lately  Deputy  Governor 
of  Massachusetts  Bay),  and  Captain  John  Mason,  and  Con- 
stable Henry  Wolcott ;  men  of  the  names  of  Grant,  Gay- 
lord,  Gillette,  Clark,  Holcomb  ;  and  among  the  men 
of  Hartford,  who,  with  Pastors  Hooker  and  Stone  and 
Magistrates  Welles,  Steele,  and  Playnes  (lately  Governor  of 
Massachusetts  Bay),  who  greeted  their  arrival,  those  of  the 
names  of  Allyn,  Hopkins,  Wadsworth,  Goodman,  Olmsted, 
Talcott,  Pratt,  Hosmer. 

The  place  of  their  assemblage  was  the  town  meeting- 
house, which  stood  nearly  upon  the  site  of  the  former  State 
Capitol,  now  the  City  Hall  of  Hartford.  They  were  present 
in  their  capacity  of  freemen  of  their  several  towns,  and  for 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  2/ 

the  purpose  of  framing  for  themselves  "an  orderly  and 
decent  government "  ;  which  purpose  they  accomplished  by 
then  and  there  adopting  a  Constitution  of  eleven  "Orders" 
or  Articles  to  be  the  supreme  civil  law  of  their  community  ; 
so,  according  to  their  own  expression,  "associating  and  con- 
joining themselves  to  be  as  one  public  State  or  common- 
wealth." 

It  is  evident  that  the  business  had  been  amply  canvassed 
and  prepared  beforehand,  since  one  brief  winter  day  sufficed 
to  bring  it  to  a  conclusion.  But  thus  our  State  of  Connecti- 
cut was  born  ;  or  rather  I  should  say  was  born  into  terms  of 
a  more  formal  and  finished  incorporation  ;  for  it  existed 
already  in  fact,  as  will  be  hereafter  considered. 

Not  at  all  impressive  in  its  externals  —  except  it  must 
have  been  marked  by  impressiveness  of  face  and  demeanor, 
and  certainly  by  impressiveness  of  speech  —  this  occasion 
was  of  a  character  so  extraordinary,  and  drew  in  its  train 
consequences  of  such  a  nature  and  of  such  magnitude,  as  to 
constitute  it  undoubtedly  the  most  memorable  occasion 
of  the  modern  ages. 

That  assemblage  was  the  first  of  its  kind  ever  held  — 
a  convention  met  to  provide  a  permanent  general  govern- 
ment for  a  people,  in  which  the  people  all  took  part.  The 
eleven  "  Orders  "  or  Articles  in  which  that  unique  popular 
convention  embodied  the  law  of  the  new  State,  was  "  the 
first  written  Constitution  in  the  history  of  nations."  The 
government  under  that  law  which  it  ordained  was  the 
first  government  of  law  alone,  alike  for  magistrate  and  for 
private  citizen,  that  was  ever  framed. 

In  the  institution  of  this  government  there  was  recognized 
no  outside  human  authority  whatsoever  as  the  source  and 
basis  of  its  powers.  It  was  to  be  "  established  according  to 
God,"  but  no  King,  nor  charter,  nor  Parliament,  nor  pre- 
viously existing  government  had  mention  in  the  instrument 
upon  which  it  was  organized.  The  Connecticut  Constitution 
of  1639  was  the  first,  the  original,  practical  assertion  on 
earth  of  the  democratic  idea  of  government,  of  the  principle 


28  250TH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    TIIK    ADOPTION    OF 

that  "  governments  derive  their  just  powers  from  the  consent 
of  the  governed."  In  none  other  of  the  American  colonies 
had  this  principle,  at  that  time,  any  place.  There  was,  to  be 
sure,  popular  suffrage  at  Plymouth,  but  distinctly  on  a 
religious  rather  than  a  political  construction  of  its  purport. 
The  Mayflower  cabin  compact,  sometimes  denominated  the 
dawning  point  of  American  democracy,  had  formally  ac- 
knowledged the  King  as  the  source  of  all  authority.  The 
government  of  the  mother  colony  of  Massachusetts  was  a 
government  by  royal  charter,  and  at  that  time  was  exercised 
by  a  magistracy  in  limited  association  with  a  privileged  class 
of  freemen.  It  was  the  same  in  the  New  Haven  colony, 
which  was  then  and  for  twenty-six  years  thereafter  a  sepa- 
rate jurisdiction. 

It  does  not  in  any  respect  exceed  the  strict  truth  to 
affirm,  as  does  our  latest  historian.  Professor  Johnston,  of 
Princeton  College, —  whose  compendious  little  book,  let  me 
say,  is  a  masterly  piece  of  work  and  ought  to  be  in  every 
home  in  the  State  —  that  "the  government  of  the  people, 
by  the  people,  for  the  people,  first  took  shape  in  Connecti- 
cut," and  that  "the  American  form  of  commonwealth  origi- 
nated here  and  not  in  Massachusetts,  Virginia,  or  any  other 
colony," — that  "  the  birth-place  of  American  democracy  is 
Hartford."  The  same  admirable  writer,  expressing  the  hope 
that  this  day  would  not  pass  without  some  proper  celebra- 
tion amongst  us  of  the  great  deed  the  men  of  Wethersfield, 
Windsor,  and  Hartford  performed  two  centuries  and  a  half 
ago,  announces  as  the  result  of  his  most  thoughtful  and 
mature  survey  of  it,  the  conviction  that  it  is  "  the  most  far- 
reaching  political  work  of  modern  times,"  from  which  direct 
lines  of  communication  run  down  "to  all  the  great  events 
which  followed,  to  commonwealth  organization  and  colonial 
resistance,  to  national  independence  and  federation,  to 
national  union  and  organization,  and  even  to  national  self- 
preservation  and  reconstruction." 

In  contemplating  our  fathers  engaged  so  long  ago  in  this 
work,  which  time  has  discovered  to  have  been  so  grandly 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  29 

done,  the  question  arises  concerning  their  thought  of  it. 
What  measure  of  it  did  they  themselves  take  ?  How  con- 
scious were  they  of  its  import } 

Dr.  Horace  Bushnell,  —  dear  and  venerable  name,  starred 
forever  in  the  roll  of  Connecticut's  noblest  sons, —  in  his  nota- 
ble address  before  the  New  England  Society  of  New  York, 
in  1849,  says  that  they  were  largely  ?/;/conscious  of  the 
meaning  of  it,  and  were  great  in  that  unconsciousness. 
Which,  as  regards  foresight  of  its  outcome,  of  its  scope  in 
relation  to  the  future,  is  certainly  true.  They  considered, 
indeed,  that  they  were  building  for  their  posterity,  and  spoke 
of  it ;  but  though  there  were  among  them  men,  by  learning 
and  by  perusal  of  the  ways  of  Providence,  as  capable  of 
seership  as  any,  there  is  no  evidence  that  of  the  mighty  un- 
foldings  that  lay  beyond  the  horizon  of  their  day,  they  had 
even  the  dimmest  anticipation.  It  is  more  than  a  genera- 
tion later,  that  Cotton  Mather,  in  one  of  his  magniloquent 
prefaces,  addressed  to  the  churches  of  the  Colony  of  Con- 
necticut, speaks  of  them  as  having  been  in  the  providence  of 
Heaven,  "whereby  the  bounds  of  people  are  set,"  carried  so 
far  westward,  "  that  some  have  pleasantly  said  the  last  con- 
flict with  anti-Christ  must  be  in  your  colony." 

They  were  here  mainly  for  religion.  As  they  were 
guided  in  their  journey  hither  through  the  untracked  wil- 
derness by  the  compass,  so  having  arrived,  they  sought  only, 
in  what  they  should  establish,  to  be  guided  by  the  mind 
of  God.  And  thus  with  present  duty,  so  highly  conceived, 
alone  in  view,  they  laid  their  lines,  unwittingly,  in  a  wisdom 
that  was  to  prove  wisdom  and  supreme  statesmanship  on 
and  on  in  all  those  vast  outgrowths  and  fulfillments  ahead 
which  they  saw  not.  Faithful  in  that  which  was  least 
they  were  faithful  also  in  much,  according  to  the  divine 
rule. 

Yet  there  is,  too,  a  sense  in  which  they  did  well  under- 
stand what  they  were  doing,  and  were  great  in  their  cori- 
scioiisness.  They  understood  that  they  were  instituting 
a  scheme  of  civil  government  without  precedent  ;  that  they 


30      25OTH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  ADOPTION  OF 

were  founding  their  State  on  a  principle  of  authority  that  in 
that  province  was  new.  Of  which  there  is  abundant  testi- 
mony of  one  kind  and  another.  Dr.  Leonard  Bacon  — 
ac^ain  a  dear  and  venerable  name  —  has  called  attention  to 
what  he  regards  a  striking  sign  thereof  which  appears  in  the 
letter  of  the  Constitution  itself,  viz.:  in  the  repeated  formula 
of  adoption  prefixed  to  its  several  articles.  The  conven- 
tional phrase  "  Be  it  enacted,"  as  traditionally  prefixed  to 
each  section  of  a  parliamentary  statute,  bore  originally,  as  he 
expounds,  a  meaning  of  petition  ;  may  it  be  enacted,  i.  e., 
by  the  sovereign.  This  phrase  those  men  of  Wethersfield, 
Windsor,  and  Hartford  rejected,  substituting  for  it  in  every 
instance,  "  it  is  ordered,  sentenced  and  decreed,"  and  they 
must  have  done  it  intelligently,  and  as  signifying  that  they 
held  their  action  subject  to  no  review,  confirmation,  or  veto 
by  any  outside  authority.  To  be  sure,  there  was  no  juris- 
diction over  them  claimed  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  or  any- 
where else  —  audibly  to  them  at  all  events  ;  and  we  may  well 
suppose  that  they  regarded  themselves  hid  away  by  distance 
and  obscurity  and  insignificance  —  as  in  fact  they  were  — 
from  observation  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  (There 
was  no  other  colony,  it  should  be  considered,  that  was  free 
to  do  what  they  did.)  It  was  not  a  note  of  defiance  and  re- 
volt that  they  thus  sounded.  It  only  showed  that  they  were 
distinctly  aware  of  founding  a  government  on  the  sole 
authority,  under  God,  of  the  will  of  the  people. 

Another  mark  of  their  clear  minds  as  to  the  peculiarity 
of  the  political  structure  they  were  creating  appears  also  in 
the  Constitution.  It  appointed  the  holding  at  such  and  such 
times,  of  two  assemblies  or  courts,  the  one  a  court  of  elec- 
tion to  choose  a  Governor  and  six  magistrates,  the  other 
a  general  court,  composed  of  the  Governor  and  magistrates 
and  a  body  of  deputies  elected  by  the  towns,  not  exceeding 
four  from  each,  to  meet  "  for  making  of  laws  and  any  other 
public  occasion  which  concerns  the  good  of  the  common- 
wealth." It  was  made  the  duty  of  the  Governor  to  issue 
seasonable   notice   for  the  convening  of    these  courts.     It 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  3I 

was  also  made  the  duty  of  the  Governor,  with  the  concur- 
rence of  a  majority  of  the  magistrates,  upon  the  arising 
of  any  need  therefor,  to  call  special  meetings  of  the  same. 
It  provided,  furthermore,  that  if  the  Governor  and  major 
part  of  the  magistrates  "  shall  either  neglect  or  refuse  to 
call  the  two  general  standing  courts,  or  either  of  them, 
as  also  at  other  times  when  the  occasions  of  the  common- 
wealth require  ;  the  freemen  thereof,  or  the  major  part 
of  them,  shall  petition  them  to  do  so  ;  if,  then,  it  be 
either  denied  or  neglected,  tJie  said  frcenioi,  or  the  major 
part  of  them,  shall  have  power  to  give  order  to  the  Con- 
stables of  the  several  towns  to  do  the  same,  and  so  may 
meet  together  and  choose  to  themselves  a  moderator,  and 
may  proceed  to  do  any  act  of  power,  which  any  other  gen- 
eral court  may." 

The  sense  of  which  is  very  unmistakable.  They  definitely 
meant  a  democracy  and  nothing  else. 

But  in  order  to  have  before  us  the  full  proof  that  such 
was  their  counsel  ;  that  their  action  was  not  anything  they 
happened  upon  ;  was  not  extempore  or  dictated  by  present 
convenience,  but  was  of  principle,  and  by  them  profoundly 
understood,  we  shall  have  to  go  back  a  space  in  history  and 
note  certain  antecedents  of  the  situation  that  go  far  to  ex- 
plain this,  its  so  famous  events,  and  not  only  so,  but  to  ex- 
plain the  existence  of  the  Connecticut  colony.  For  the  fact 
is,  as  we  shall  see,  our  forefathers  of  the  colony  came  to 
Connecticut  as  much  as  for  anything  else,  to  say  the  least, 
to  do  that  thing. 

During  the  three  or  four  years  of  the  great  Puritan  influx 
beginning  with  1630,  the  greater  part  of  those  who  later 
settled  our  three  river  towns  emigrated  from  England  and 
became  founders  and  inhabitants  of  Dorchester,  Newtown 
(now  Cambridge),  and  Watertown,  in  Massachusetts.  There 
they  were  under  jurisdiction  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay 
colony.  The  administration  of  affairs  in  that  colony  was  by 
its  charter  originally  intrusted  to  a  magistracy  consisting  of 
a  governor,  deputy  governor,  and  eighteen  assistants  to  be 


32  25OTII    ANNIVKRSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

elected  by  the  freemen.  But  four  times  a  year  the  magis- 
trates and  the  freemen  were  to  meet  in  a  general  court,  "  with 
full  power  to  choose  and  admit  into  the  company  so  many  as 
they  should  think  fit,  to  elect  and  constitute  all  requisite 
subordinate  officers,  and  to  make  laws  and  ordinances  for  the 
welfare  of  the  company,  and  for  the  government  of  the  lands, 
and  the  inhabitants  of  the  plantation."  A  liberal  charter, 
astonishingly  so,  considering  that  it  was  the  grant  of  King 
Charles  I.  ;  and  that,  only  a  few  days  before,  in  1629,  he  pro- 
claimed his  design  of  thereafter  ruling  England  without  the 
aid  of  Parliament.  It  only  substantiates  the  truth  of  what 
Mr.  Bancroft  says,  that  the  early  New  England  community 
was  "  so  humble  that  no  statesman  condescended  to  notice  it." 
The  liberal  charter  of  the  Bay  colony  was,  indeed,  too 
liberal.  So  thought  many  of  the  leaders  of  the  colony,  the 
men  chief  in  wealth,  social  rank,  and  influence ;  so  thought 
Governor  John  Winthrop ;  so  thought  the  assistants,  most 
of  them  ;  so  thought  a  majority  of  the  ministers,  i.  e.,  if  you 
construed  it  to  mean — which  they  did  not  —  that  the  free- 
men might  have  a  controlling  voice  in  affairs,  or  equal 
authority  with  the  magistrates  ;  or,  for  that  matter,  any 
authority  at  all  except  to  choose  the  magistrates.  So  thought 
not,  it  presently  transpired,  a  considerable  element  among 
the  freemen.  There  was  difficulty  in  adjusting  the  relations 
of  magistrates  and  people  from  the  very  outset ;  and  it  was 
long  continued.  It  lasted  —  the  conflict  assuming  various 
phases  in  turn  — till  near  the  end  of  the  century.  At  first, 
the  freemen,  largely  it  would  seem  under  the  advice  of  the 
ministers,  gave  ground,  and  consented  to  the  supremacy  of 
the  magistrates.  At  the  first  general  court  held  October 
19,  1630,  it  was  propounded  as  the  best  course  to  be  adopted 
in  government  "  that  the  freemen  should  have  power  of 
choosing  assistants,  the  assistants  to  choose  from  amongst 
themselves  a  governor  and  deputy,  which  governor  and 
deputy,  with  the  assistants,  should  have  the  power  of  making 
laws  and  choosing  officers  to  execute  the  same,"  and  to  this 
the  freemen,  numbering   about    one  hundred   and   twenty. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  33 

agreed,  /.  e.,  to  this  usurpation  —  for  such  it  actually  was. 
But  it  was  a  few  months  only  after  the  arrival ;  the  colony  was 
in  bitter  straits  of  want  ;  all  were  in  distress  together ;  how 
to  keep  alive  was  the  main  concern  ;  it  was  really  a  make- 
shift policy  prescribed  by  necessity  ;  and  the  usurped  powers 
were  mildly  used.  However,  the  year  following,  in  163 1, 
the  freemen  defined  their  right  to  elect  the  assistants  to  be 
the  right  to  el(3[:t  them  annually,  and  to  remove  them  for 
cause.  But  this  check  upon  the  government  was  more 
than  offset  by  the  decree  of  the  authorities  that  same  year, 
prompted  by  uneasiness  at  the  number  of  new  arrivals 
seeking  admission  to  the  list  of  freemen,  that  thereafter  none 
should  be  endowed  with  "  the  liberties  of  the  commonwealth," 
i.  e.,  with  the  gift  of  the  elective  franchise,  but  members  of 
the  church, —  than  which  probably  no  limitation  of  civil 
privilege  was  ever  better  intended. 

The  magistrates  had  gathered  the  reins  of  government 
into  their  hands,  but  matters  would  not  so  rest.  With 
easier  times,  which  were  not  long  delayed,  freeing  the  minds 
of  the  people  to  give  thought  to  the  political  situation  —  to 
attend  to  their  general  interests,  and  to  mark  the  doings  of 
the  powers  that  were  —  there  straightway  arose  discontent, 
criticism,  dissension,  debate,  and  a  disposition  clearly  mani- 
fest not  to  leave  things  as  they  were  —  to  undo  some  things. 
The  towns  made  trouble  about  accepting  the  acts  of  the 
government  in  various  cases  —  conspicuously  the  three 
towns  which  subsequently  migrated  to  Connecticut.  Why, 
could  be  considerably  explained,  perhaps,  might  we  extend 
our  notice  of  antecedents  further  back  still  across  the  ocean  ; 
but  so  it  was. 

In  1631,  Watertown,  for  instance,  by  advice  of  their  pastor 
Phillips,  and  elder  Brown,""  delivered  to  the  people  assembled  " 
that  it  "was  not  safe  to  pay  moneys  after  that  sort  for 
fear  of  bringing  themselves  and  their  posterity  into  bond- 
age," resisted  the  decree  of  an  assessment,  and  had  to  be 
managed  ;  Governor  Winthrop  explaining  to  the  malcontents, 
as  he  recites  in  his  journal,  "  that  this  government  was  of 
5 


34  250TII    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    AnOPTION    OF 

the  nature  of  a  parliament,  and  that  no  assistant  could  be 
chosen  but  by  the  freemen,  who  had  power  likewise  to  re- 
move the  assistants  ;  whereupon,"  he  says,  "they  were  fully 
satisfied,  and  so  their  submission  was  accepted  and  their 
offense  pardoned."     l^ut  their  penitence  was  not  lasting. 

In  1632,  the  governor  had  to  go  to  Newtown  to  compose, 
with  the  help  of  mediating  friends,  a  serious  difficulty  with 
his  own  deputy,  Thomas  Dudley,  residing  there,  relating  in 
part  to  the  "  ground  and  limits  of  the  governor's  official 
authority  whereby  patent  or  otherwise,"  the  contention  be- 
tween them  being  very  hot  and  failing  to  be  composed  then 
or  at  any  time  ;  notwithstanding  (so  the  governor  records) 
"  they  usually  met  about  their  affairs,  and  that  without  any 
appearance  of  any  breach  or  discontent,  and  ever  after  kept 
peace  and  good  correspondency  together  in  love  and  friend- 
ship." Which  was  true,  no  doubt,  for  they  were  warmly 
attached  Christian  friends,  but  differed  in  politics. 

Simultaneously,  in  Dorchester  the  same  temper  of  jealousy 
and  recalcitration  was  awake,  as  we  may  judge  from  the  cir- 
cumstance that  a  little  later  Israel  Stoughton,  a  deputy  to 
the  general  court  from  that  town  (it  was  the  first  year  such 
town  representatives  were  conceded  place  in  the  court,  and 
then  to  vote  on  the  taxes,  not  on  the  laws,)  was  sentenced 
to  three  years'  disfranchisement  as  the  penalty  of  uttering 
the  heresy  that  the  charter  made  the  power  of  the  governor 
and  assistants  ''  ministerial  2iZQ.o\i}i\\\%  to  the  greater  vote  of 
the  general  court,  and  not  magisterial  according  to  their  own 
discretion."  Later  yet  (in  1635),  the  same  offender  in  a 
private  letter  described  the  political  condition  of  the  colony 
at  that  initial  stage  thus  :  "When  I  came  into  the  country, 
and  for  one  whole  year  after,  the  government  was  solely  in 
the  hands  of  the  assistants.  The  people  chose  their  magis- 
trates, and  then  they  made  laws,  disposed  of  lands,  raised 
moneys,  punished  offenders,  etc.,  at  their  discretion  ;  neither 
did  the  people  know  the  patent,  nor  what  prerogative  and 
liberty  they  had  of  the  same." 

Before  this  time,  though,  the  people  did  know  something 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION,  35 

on  those  points,  for  the  concession  of  a  representation  of  the 
towns  in  the  general  court,  with  such  voice  therein  as  I  have 
just  stated,  had  ensued  upon  the  towns,  by  a  committee  of 
two  from  each,  going  to  Boston  and  asking  for  a  sight  of  the 
xharter,  which  having  seen,  "  they  conceived  thereby,"  says 
Winthrop,  "  that  all  their  laws  should  be  made  at  the  general 
court,  and  repaired  to  the  governor  (/.  <?.,  himself)  to  advise 
with  him  about  it,"  and  about  the  abrogation  of  some  orders 
formerly  made ;  who  told  them  (paternally)  that  when  the 
patent  was  granted  the  number  of  freemen  "  was  supposed  to 
be  so  few  that  they  might  well  join  in  making  laws,  but  now 
there  were  so  many  that  it  was  not  possible."  Hereafter,  in- 
deed, he  added,  "  they  might  have  a  select  company  to 
intend  that  work,  yet  for  the  present  they  were  not  furnished 
with  a  sufficient  number  of  men  qualified  for  such  a  business ;" 
and  concluded  with  authorizing  or  granting  the  representa- 
tign  aforementioned.  But  Israel  Stoughton  of  Dorchester 
was  not  satisfied  with  that  free  rendering,  and  put  forth  his 
interpretation  of  the  charter,  and  so  made  it  necessary  that 
he  should  be  suppressed. 

I  have  quoted  instances  enough  to  show  how  troubled  were 
the  waters  in  which  the  Bay  colony's  ship  of  State  was 
launched,  and  the  causes  by  which  they  were  troubled. 
The  strife  about  government  was  inevitable.  Nobody  could 
help  it.  The  acid  and  alkali  of  the  antagonistic  principles 
of  aristocracy  and  democracy  were  thrown  together  —  the 
true  quality  of  each  disguised  by  complication  with  religion 
—  and  what  came  of  it  was  but  the  natural  result.  Nor  con- 
sidering that  the  elements  opposed  were  absolutely  irrecon- 
cilable did  any  men  ever  in  the  world  sustain  the  test  of 
character  inherent  in  such  a  situation  more  creditabl)'-  to 
themselves  and  to  human  nature,  than  did  the  if  en  of  the 
infant  Massachusetts  colony  in  their  divided  counsels.  The 
wonder  is,  not  that  they  developed  so  much  bitterness  in  the 
circumstances,  but  that  they  developed  so  little.  They 
strove  with  one  another  on  terms  of  cordial,  unbroken,  mu- 
tual respect  in  the  main  all   round.     The  aristocrats,  as  a 


36  25OTH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

class,  were  marked  by  the  spirit  of  brother! iness  and  mag- 
nanimity. John  Winthrop,  their  leader,  was  one  of  the 
noblest  souls  that  ever  lived,  transparently  brave,  strong, 
high-minded,  gentle,  unselfish,  caring  for  nothing  but  the 
honor  of  God,  and  the  best  good  of  man  as  he  understood  it, 
—  a  genuinely  great  man. 

The  protracted  and  involved  story  of  the  war  of  ideas  in 
the  Bay,  so  early  inaugurated,  were  quite  too  long  to  tell. 
Nor  is  there  any  reason  why  it  should  be  told  further  now. 
In  what  of  it  I  have  touched,  I  have  desired  only  to  indicate 
the  state  of  things  in  "the  Bay"  that  met  Thomas  Hooker 
and  his  two  hundred  fellow  emigrants  when  they  reached 
there  by  the  ship  Griffiji,  in  September,  1633,  and  took  up 
their  abode  as  a  body  in  Newtown. 

"Mr.  Hooker's  company" — as  it  was  usually  called  — 
was  the  most  considerable  accession  in  numbers,  but  espe- 
cially in  quality,  the  colony  had  received.  While  Hooker  was 
the  recognized  leader  of  it,  as  its  bearing  his  name  suggests, 
there  were  other  men  included  in  it  who  were  of  mark  for 
ability,  accomplishments,  and  character ;  as,  for  example, 
Samuel  Stone,  Hooker's  colleague  in  the  ministry.  But  pre- 
eminent among  them  John  Haynes,  a  gentleman  of  ancient 
family  and  large  estate  in  Essex,  who  became  Connecticut's 
first  governor,  and  was  reelected  to  thatofifice  every  alternate 
year  as  long  as  he  lived,  and  who  is  scarcely  second  to  tlookcr 
in  his  title  to  be  named  our  Founder.  The  same  ship  brought 
also  the  distinguished  John  Cotton,  who  came,  as  Palfrey 
says,  "from  twenty  years  in  the  pulpit  of  one  of  the  most 
stately  parish  churches  in  England  to  preach  the  gospel 
within  the  mud  walls  and  under  the  thatched  roof  of  the 
meeting-house  in  a  rude  New  England  hamlet,"  which  Boston 
then  was. 

No  sooner  was  the  new  company  here  than  it  found  itself 
involved  in  the  brew  and  ferment  of  the  conflict  that  was 
agitating  the  colony.  John  Cotton,  who  had  been  inducted 
into  his  pastoral  office  immediately  on  his  arrival,  and  the 
complexion  of  whose  political  belief  is  reflected  in  his  saying. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  IJ 

"  Democracy  I  do  not  conceive  that  ever  God  did  ordain  as  a 
fit  government  either  for  church  or  commonwealth,"  at  once 
took  sides,  vigorously,  aggressively,  and  with  the  magistrates ; 
preaching  at  the  court  of  election  held  May  14,  1634  —  the 
court  at  which  he  was  initiated  into  the  liberties  of  the 
commonwealth, —  a  sermon  upon  the  subject  of  the  tenure 
of  the  magisterial  office,  just  then  in  dispute,  maintaining 
that  "A  magistrate  ought  not  to  be  turned  into  the  condi- 
tion of  a  private  man  without  just  cause,"  t.  e.,  that  his  ten- 
ure was  permanent.  To  which  the  freemen  forthwith 
responded,  when  it  came  to  the  election,  by  retiring  Gover- 
nor Winthrop  to  his  face,  whom,  personally,  all  loved  and 
revered,  and  putting  Thomas  Dudley  in  his  place.  And  the 
next  year  after  they  repeated  the  act  by  retiring  Thomas 
Dudley  and  choosing  John  Haynes  governor,  and  making 
other  changes  in  the  magistracy  "  partly  (says  Winthrop) 
because  the  people  would  exercise  their  absolute  power  " — 
such  of  it  as  they  had. 

It  was  to  this  same  court  that  the  Newtown  people,  eight 
months  only  after  Mr.  Hooker  came,  on  the  plea  of  "  strait- 
ness  for  want  of  room,"  applied  for  leave  to  look  out  either 
for  enlargement  or  removal  ;  which  application  was  granted. 
But  at  the  court  that  met  the  September  following  they  ap- 
plied further  for  leave  to  remove  to  Connecticut,  z.  c,  for 
leave  to  go  entirely  away.  Upon  this  application  the  vote  of 
the  court  was  divided  ;  the  deputies  being  fifteen  to  ten  for 
granting  it  ;  the  magistrates,  all  but  the  governor  and  two 
assistants,  for  denying  it.  Of  which  two  assistants  it  is  rea- 
sonable to  conjecture  Mr.  Haynes,  who  was  in  that  office  at 
the  time,  was  one. 

Although  the  principal  motive  that  we  must  judge  lay 
behind  this  application  is  already  not  doubtfully  to  be 
guessed,  it  will  be  interesting  to  note  the  grounds  on  which 
it  was  this  second  time  formally  based.  They  were,  suc- 
cinctly, three  :  First,  want  of  room  in  Massachusetts,  as 
before.  Second,  the  fruitfulness  and  commodiousness  of 
Connecticut,  and   the   danger   of    having    it    possessed    by 


38  25OTH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

Others,  Dutch  or  Enghsh.  Tliird,  "the  stroni;  bent  of  their 
spirits  to  remove  thither." 

Whatever  the  weight  of  the  first  two  reasons  in  the 
minds  of  the  applicants,  whether  more  or  less, —  and  they 
had  some  weight,  for,  as  farming  and  grazing  communities 
they  zuere  crowded  ;  it  was  alleged  by  Mr.  Hooker  (notes 
Winthrop)  as  "a  fundamental  error"  that  the  towns 
were  set  so  near  to  each  other  ;  and  reports  of  explorers 
had  spread  information  of  the  eligibility  of  Connecticut 
for  settlement  ;  and  there  ivas  apprehension  in  the  colony 
lest  the  Dutch,  or  other  English  than  they  desired,  should 
plant  themselves  in  it, —  it  can  scarcely  be  mistaken  that 
the  unexplained  "  bent  of  spirit"  named  for  the  third 
reason  expressed  a  motive  more  potent  in  the  case  than 
either  of  the  others,  or  both  of  them  together.  No  more 
can  what  were  the  main  inducing  causes  of  that  "  bent " 
be  mistaken. 

The  reasons  urged  against  granting  the  petition  are  also 
of  interest,  and  even  of  pathetic  interest,  it  seems  to  me.  As 
supplied  by  Winthrop's  journal,  they  are,  with  slight  abridg- 
ment, these  :  First,  "  That  in  point  of  conscience  they  ought 
not  to  depart  from  us,  being  knit  to  us  in  one  body,  and  bound 
by  oath  to  seek  the  welfare  of  this  commonwealth."  Second, 
That  "in  point  of  State  and  civil  policy  we  ought  not  to  give 
them  leave  to  depart,  being  we  were  now  weak  and  in  danger 
to  be  assailed;  and  the  departure  of  Mr.  Hooker  would  not  only 
draw  many  from  us,  but  also  divert  other  friends  that  would 
come  to  us,"  besides  "we  should  expose  them  to  peril  both 
from  the  Dutch  and  the  Indians,"  and  perhaps  from 
the  King  for  their  unsanctioned  occupation  of  territory. 
Third,  "  They  might  be  accommodated  at  home  by  some 
enlargement  which  other  towns  offered."  Fourth,  "They 
might  remove  to  Merrimac  or  any  other  place  within  our 
patent."  Fifth,  "  The  removing  of  a  candlestick  is  a  great 
judgment  which  is  to  be  avoided." 

These  objections  surely  constituted  no  mean  argument. 
The  proposed  emigration  would  be,  surely,  a  sad  dismember- 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    COXSTITUTION.  39 

nient  of  the  little  commonwealth,  whose  chief  poverty  (as 
John  Cotton  said)  was  poverty  of  man.  The  whole  popula- 
tion of  the  Bay  was  less  than  four  thousand  souls,  from 
which  such  an  exodus  as  was  planned,  of  three  towns  out  of 
eight,  would  subtract  nearly  a  third  ;  and  if  other  elements 
of  strength  than  numbers  were  counted,  that  proportion  did 
by  no  means  represent  the  loss  to  be  inflicted.  It  cannot 
be  supposed  that  men  like  Hooker  and  Haynes  and  their  as- 
sociates were  insensible  to  the  appeal  of  such  considera- 
tions, or  did  not  feel  their  entire  force  ;  especially  when 
brought  home  to  them  by  the  urgencies  of  private  expostula- 
tion and  entreaty  from  those  to  whom  they  were  intimately 
bound  in  ties  of  friendship  and  a  peculiar  sympathy  in  many 
important  respects,  toward  whom  they  ever  entertained  sen- 
timents of  the  highest  esteem.  And  it  appears  that  after 
the  answer  before  stated  had  been  returned  by  the  court 
to  their  application,  under  the  influence  of  endeavors  put 
forth  to  provide  them  room,  and  of  persuasion,  and  possibly, 
of  Mr.  Haynes's  elevation  to  the  Governorship,  which  they 
may  have  construed  as  importing  some  promise  of  the 
abatement  or  cure  of  certain  ills  in  the  State,  they  did  for  a 
season  suspend  the  enterprise  of  migration.  But  for  a  sea- 
son only.  The  matter  had  gone  too  far ;  too  many  were  en- 
listed in  it,  to  permit  it  to  be  abandoned.  Detachments 
from  the  disaffected  towns  began  to  make  their  way  to  Con- 
necticut, leave  or  no  leave.  Meanwhile  the  political  caul- 
dron ceased  not  to  boil  in  Massachusetts  ;  the  contention 
concerning  magistrates,  in  particular,  growing  more  acute 
than  ever.  The  movement  was  shortly  resumed.  Following 
the  example  of  Newtown,  the  inhabitants  of  Watertown,  at 
the  General  Court  in  May,  1635  ;  and  at  its  adjourned  meet- 
ing, the  next  month,  those  of  Dorchester ;  sought  permission 
of  removal  —  whither  the  record  does  not  specify,  though 
doubtless  it  was  to  Connecticut  —  and  in  each  case  were 
granted  "liberty  to  remove  themselves  to  any  place  they 
shall  think  meet  to  make  choice  of,  provided  they  continue 
still  under  this  government."  Which  certainly  was  not  say- 
ing that  they  might  go  to  Connecticut. 


40  25OTII    ANNIVERSARY    OF    TUF.     ADOPTION    OF 

On  the  subject  of  removal,  Newtown,  it  is  to  be  observed, 
did  not  further  trouble  the  court,  and  that  for  a  reason  that 
deserves  to  be  remarked.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the 
vote  on  her  application  in  September,  1634,  for  leave  to 
remove  to  Connecticut  had  been  a  divided  one  ;  the  magis- 
trates by  a  majority  being  against  it,  the  deputies,  the  com- 
mons, by  a  majority  for  it.  Whereupon  the  question  arose 
whether  or  no  it  \\:xs  gj'aiited.  The  magistrates  said  it  was 
not.  But  Newtown  claimed  that  it  zvas,  and  held  the  busi- 
ness concluded,  which  is  significant  of  her  position  in 
the  war  of  opinion  that  was  vexing  the  colony. 

The  exodus  took  place  in  the  year  1636.  By  the  close  of 
the  summer  of  that  year  half  the  people  of  Dorchester,  the 
larger  portion  of  the  people  of  Watertown,  and  the  strength 
of  Newtown,  were  dwellers  in  a  new  Dorchester,  Watertown, 
and  Newtown  on  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut. 

The  same  migration  also  included  a  company  from  Rox- 
bury  that  planted  itself  at  Agawam  (now  Springfield),  and 
was  a  member  of  the  Connecticut  colony  till,  ere  the  Con- 
stitution was  formed,  the  boundary  line  was  drawn  that  re- 
stored it  to  the  Bay. 

So  then  was  accomplished,  not  without  displeasure  and 
grief,  and  efforts  of  obstruction  on  the  part  of  the  officials 
of  the  mother  colony,  yet  in  the  event  without  breach  of 
friendship,  the  desired  departure  out  of  her  jurisdiction.  It 
was  by  the  magistrates  of  the  Bay  never  consented  to. 
The  only  permission  it  had  was  the  tacit  one  implied  in  a 
certain  provision  made  at  request,  when  it  was  on  the  point 
to  be  off,  by  the  General  Court  —  which  there  will  be  occasion 
to  speak  of  by-and-by — for  the  temporary  rule  of  the  sepa- 
rating community  and  a  loan  of  arms  and  ammunition  for  its 
protection. 

That  it  was  such  a  secession  as  the  facts  we  have 
glanced  at  would  lead  us  to  think  —  preponderantly  politi- 
cal in  its  motive  —  that  one  immediate  end  it  was  designed 
to  secure  was  escape  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Bay,  is  an 
inference  more    definitely  justified   still  by  the  ascertained 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    COXSTITUTION.  4I 

views  and  principles  of  the  man  who  was  its  acknowledged 
head. 

Of  the  attitude  assumed  by  Thomas  Hooker  on  the  ques- 
tions of  government  over  which  he  had  found  the  colony  in 
turmoil,  nothing  has  been  said.  Nor  is  there  much  to  be 
said.  How  he  sided  in  his  opinions  is  sufficiently  plain. 
He  made  no  concealment  of  it.  But  apparently  he  took  no 
very  open  part — at  least  no  forward  part  —  in  the  public 
dispute.  As  far  as  possible  from  a  timid  or  a  compromising 
man,  he  was  not  of  a  pugnacious  temper,  and  his  spirit  was 
tolerant.  It  is  one  of  his  recorded  sayings  that  "  if  men 
would  be  tender  and  careful  to  keep  off  offensive  expres- 
sions, they  might  keep  some  distance  in  opinion  without 
hazard  to  truth  or  love."  Moreover,  the  chiefs  of  the  domi- 
nant class,  i.  e.,  those  who  stood  for  the  aristocratic  theory, 
were  men  he  too  much  honored,  not  to  make  it  an  extremely 
unacceptable  thing  to  him  to  antagonize  them.  Then  again, 
as  we  have  seen,  shortly  after  their  arrival,  in  less  than  a  year, 
he  and  his  company  had  made  up  their  minds  to  withdraw 
from  the  colony  as  soon  as  might  be ;  that  on  the  whole, 
there  being  so  convenient  and  goodly  a  land  as  Connecticut 
to  withdraw  to,  it  was  advisable  for  the  minority  to 
do  so  rather  than  stay  and  fight  out  their  differences 
with  their  friends.  Accordingly  during  the  three  years  he 
remained  in  Massachusetts  he  Feems  to  have  preserved  the 
posture  of  a  pacificator  rather  than  of  a  partisan.  Not  that 
he  was  without  weight  in  the  contest  going  on,  for  his  views 
were  well-known,  and  that  they  favored  the  cause  of  the 
freemen.  He  was  felt  to  be  their  ally,  and  the  circumstance 
visibly  emboldened  their  policy.  One  of  the  early  annalists 
of  New  England,  Hubbard,  reports  that  "after  his  coming 
it  was  observed  that  many  of  the  freemen  grew  to  be  very 
jealous  of  their  liberties." 

But  in  a  correspondence  of  his  with  Winthrop,  from  Con- 
necticut, in  the  fall  of  1638,  primarily  respecting  a  bound- 
ary question  and  other  business  affairs,  there  occurs  a 
luminous  and  impressive  disclosure — all  the  more  impress- 
6 


42  25OTII    ANNIVEKSARV    OF    Till':    ADOPTION    OF 

ive  since  it  is  incidental  —  of  what  tlic  ])olitical  convictions 
and  sentiments  were  which  he  had  entertained  at  that  time  ; 
which  he  brou,i;ht  with  him  across  the  seas.  The  corre- 
spondence exhibits  the  most  essential  convicti^ms  and  senti- 
ments of  both  men,  indeed.  Winthrop,  who  wrote  first,  has 
affirmed  "  the  unwarrantableness  and  unsafeness  of  refer- 
ring matter  of  council  of  judicature  to  the  body  of  the 
people,  because  the  best  part  is  always  the  least,  and  of  that 
best  part  the  wiser  part  is  always  the  lesser.  The  old  law 
was  :  '  Thou  shalt  bring  the  matter  to  the  judge.'  " 

To  which  Hooker  rejoins,  "  That  in  the  via tter  which  is  re- 
ferred to  the  judge,  the  sentence  should  be  left  to  his  discretion. 
I  ever  looked  at  it  as  a  way  wJiicIi  leads  directly  to  tyranny, 
and  so  to  cojifusion  ;  and  imist  plainly  profess,  if  it  was  in 
my  liberty,  I  sJioiild  choose  neither  to  live,  nor  leave  my  pos- 
terity, tinder  such  a  govenmient.  Let  the  judge  do  according 
to  the  sentence  of  the  law.  Seek  the  law  at  its  mouth.  The 
heathen  man  said,  by  the  light  of  connnon  sense.  '  The  law  is 
not  subject  to  passion,  and  therefore  ought  to  have  chief  rule 
over  rulers  themselves.^  It's  also  a  truth  that  counsel  should 
be  sought  from  councillors.  But  the  question  yet  is,  who 
those  should  be.  In  matters  of  greater  consequence,  which 
concern  the  common  good,  a  general  council  chosen  by  all,  to 
transact  businesses  wJiich  concern  all,  I  conceive,  under  favor, 
most  suitable  to  rule,  and  most  safe  for  relief  of  the  whole." 

In  these  so  pregnant  and  w^eighty  words,  which  deserve 
to  be  spread  in  letters  of  gold  on  the  walls  of  our  Capitol, 
penned  in  a  settler's  rude  abode  in  this  town  of  Hartford,  is 
contained  the  first  known  definite  pronunciation  of  the 
democratic  principle  of  civil  rights  and  civil  liberties.  They 
marked  the  farthest  advance  in  that  direction  which  human 
thought  had  then  reached  —  then  or  since  —  its  arrival,  in 
fact,  at  a  goal,  an  ultimatum.  But  here  we  discern  the  dif- 
ference in  political  creed  between  those  two  representative 
men  —  that  it  is  fundamental,  absolute,  without  remedy,  not 
to  be  reconciled.  Plainly  enough  as  statesmen,  under  the 
circumstances,  like  Lot  and  Abraham,  they  had  to  go  apart. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  43 

Plainly  enough,  too,  we  are  in  sight  of  the  Connecticut  Con- 
stitution, for  here  is  the  manifest  seed  of  it,  now  germinant 
in  its  native  soil. 

It  is,  indeed,  near  by.  We  are  back  again  within  a  short 
distance  of  the  point  in  history  from  which  we  set  out.  The 
fixed  frame  of  government  that  the  colony  shall  adopt  is, 
while  Thomas  Hooker  is  writing  this  letter,  the  theme  of 
general  talk  in  the  three  towns  —  with  what  pros  and  cons 
and  diversities  of  counsel,  is  left  to  our  imagination.  Wh'ich 
talk  will  ripen  a  few  months  hence  in  that  illustrious  deed 
which  we  are  here  gathered  gratefully  to  recall  and  to  praise. 
If  its  visible  antecedents,  as  I  have  imperfectly  sketched 
them,  are  to  be  reckoned  in  the  account  of  it,  then  truly  it 
was  a  deed  done  not  without  full  appreciation  and  clear  con- 
sciousness, on  the  part  of  its  doers,  of  its  unparalleled  nature 
and  its  profound  meaning. 

It  has  been  a  subject  of  no  little  inquiry  among  students 
of  our  history  who  the  author —  i.  c,  so  far  as  it  may  be  said 
to  have  been  the  production  of  an  individual  —  of  our  first 
Constitution  was.  The  question,  it  may  be  assumed,  never 
can  be  answered.  Conjecture,  based  on  certain  not  unrea- 
sonable though  scanty  supports,  has  most  frequently  assigned 
the  distinction  to  Roger  Ludlow,  of  Windsor,  reputed  to 
have  been  the  foremost  lawyer  in  all  the  colonies  ;  a  man  of 
strong  parts,  active  in  affairs,  capable  of  such  a  work.  Had 
assigned  it  to  him  it  should  be  said,  rather ;  for  there  trans- 
pired recently,  or  comparatively  so,  fresh  and  important 
ground  of  opinion  on  the  point,  to  add  doubt  to  that  conjec- 
ture, if  not  to  turn  the  balance  against  it  and  substitute 
another  in  its  place  as  more  probable. 

The  discovery  of  the  evidence  to  which  I  allude  fitly  fell 
to  the  fortune,  or,  more  properly,  was  awarded  to  the  skill  of 
the  present  distinguished  president  of  this  society,  whose 
large  and  zealous  and  conspicuously  competent  labors  in  the 
field  of  our  colonial  history  have  been  a  public  service  of  the 
highest  value,  and  justly  entitle  him  an  authority  in  that 
field  second  to  none.     It  is  to  him  that  we  owe  the  identiti- 


44  250Tri    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

cation  and  rescue  from  the  tomb  where  it  lay  buried  of  that 
priceless  letter  of  Thomas  Hooker's  that  has  just  been 
quoted.  (And  I  may  as  well  interject  here,  what  it  would 
be  an  impropriety  in  me  not  to  say  somewhere,  that  I  am 
under  a  degree  of  obligation  to  him  for  quite  indispensable 
assistance  in  the  preparation  of  this  address — assistance 
most  liberally  and  patiently  rendered, —  which  it  were  dififi- 
cult  to  overstate.) 

There  fell  into  Dr.  Trumbull's  hands  a  few  years  since, 
turning  up  among  a  miscellany  of  historic  relics  that  came 
into  possession  of  this  society,  a  small  manuscript  volume, 
dating  back  to  the  time  of  the  settlement  of  the  colony,  con- 
taining abstracts  of  sermons  written  in  cipher,  by  Henry 
W'olcott,  of  Windsor.  Divining  at  once  the  importance  of 
what  these  notes  might  disclose,  Dr.  Trumbull  applied  him- 
self to  the  task  of  their  unlocking,  and  with  his  customary 
success.  And  for  his  principal  and  surely  most  satisfying 
reward,  he  had  the  pleasure  of  bringing  to  light  a  discourse 
of  Thomas  Hooker's,  preached  at  Hartford  on  the  31st  of 
May,  1638,  some  time  before  he  wrote  the  letter  to  Gover- 
nor Winthrop,  eight  months  before  the  Constitution  was 
adopted,  of  a  character  to  make  it  certainly  one  of  the  most 
memorable  of  human  utterances,  and  to  fix  on  him,  above 
any  person  beside,  the  presumption  of,  at  any  rate,  an 
immediate  concern  in  shaping  the  organic  law  of  the  new 
State.  The  text  of  the  discourse  was  Deuteronomy  i.  :  13, 
and  following  verses  :  "  Take  you  wise  vicn  and  iindcr- 
standijig,  and  k?iO'wn  among  yonr  tribes,  and  I  will  make 
them  riders  over  you.  .  .  .  captaitis  over  thousands,  and 
captains  over  hundreds,  over  fifties,  over  tens''  etc.  (I  re- 
peat it  as  it  is  in  the  notes  —  the  latter  part  abridged.) 

The  notes  themselves  arc  so  brief,  and  are  a  monument 
of  such  extraordinary  interest,  and  so  suitable  to  be  rehearsed 
at  this  time,  that,  by  your  leave,  I  will  give  them  entire. 

They  are  under  three  general  divisions :  Doctrine  : 
Reasons  :    Uses.     (Or,  as  we  should  say.  Applications.) 

Doctrine —  i.  That  tjie  choice  of  public  magistrates,  belongs 
unto  the  people,  by  God's  own  allowance. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  45 

2.  The  privilege  of  election,  which  belongs  to  the  people, 
therefore,  must  not  be  exercised  according  to  their  humours,  but 
according  to  the  blessed  will  and  law  of  God. 

3.  They  who  have  power  to  appoint  officers  and  magistrates, 
it  is  in  their  power,  also,  to  set  the  bounds  and  limitations  of  the 
power  and  place  unto  which  they  call  them. 

(This  last,  obviously  enough,  with  a  glance  in  the  direction 
of  Massachusetts.) 

Reasons —  i.  Because  the  foundation  of  authority  is  laid,  firstly, 
in  the  free  consent  of  the  people. 

2.  Because,  by  a  free  choice,  the  hearts  of  the  people  will  be 
more  inclined  to  the  love  of  the  persons  chosen,  and  more  ready 
to  yield  obedience. 

3.  Because  of  that  duty  and  engagement  of  the  people. 

(/.  e.  because  they  will  be  in  the  position  of  a  party  to  a  contract.) 

Uses  —  The  lesson  taught  is  three-fold  : 

I  St.  There  is  matter  of  thankful  acknowledgment  in  the  appre- 
ciation of  God's  faithfulness  towards  us,  and  the  permission  of 
these  measures  that  God  doth  command  and  vouchsafe. 

2dly.  Of  reproof  —  to  dash  the  councils  of  all  those  that  shall 
oppose  it. 

3dly.  Of  exhortation  —  to  persuade  us,  as  God  hath  given  us 
liberty,  to  take  it. 

And  lastly,  as  God  hath  spared  our  lives,  and  given  us  them  in 
liberty,  so  to  seek  the  guidance  of  God,  to  choose  in  God  and 
for  God. 

In  so  few  and  such  words  did  young  Mr.  Wolcott,  of 
Windsor,  set  down  the  substance  of  that  great  manifesto  of 
liberty  ;  how  little  deeming  that  his  jottings  are  the  sole 
record  by  which,  more  than  two  centuries  later,  it  shall  be 
redeemed  from  oblivion,  and  laurel  with  new  and  imperisha- 
ble honor,  the  memory  of  the  divine  and  statesman  who  gave 
it  voice ! 

They  present  the  structural  bones  simply  of  the  discourse. 
The  manner  in  which,  in  the  hour,  or  more  likely  two  hours, 
he  spoke,  the  preacher,  who  had  been  renowned  among  the 
pulpit   orators   in   England,  the   stream  of  whose  fervid  clo- 


46  250TFI    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE     AHOF'TION    OF 

quence  was  ever  wont  to  be  rich  and  full,  clothed  them  in 
flesh,  is  left  to  fancy.     But  what  life  in  the  bones ! 

That  sermon,  says  Dr.  Bacon,  "  is  the  earliest  known  sug- 
gestion of  a  fundamental  law  enacted  not  by  royal  charter, 
nor  by  concession  from  any  previously  existing  govern- 
ment, but  by  the  people  themselves  —  a  primary  and 
supreme  law  by  which  the  government  is  constituted,  and 
which  not  only  provides  for  the  free  choice  of  magistrates 
by  the  people,  but  also  *  sets  the  bounds  and  limitations  of 
the  power  and  place  to  which  *  each  magistrate  is  called." 
And  considering  the  sequence  of  events,  and  the  complete 
correspondence  of  the  frame  of  government  presently  to 
be  erected  by  those  who  heard  him  that  day — for  the 
assembled  colony  was  no  doubt  his  audience  —  with  the 
propositions  he  maintained  ;  who,  respecting  the  paternity 
of  the  instrument  by  which  it  was  defined,  must  not  justify 
the  conclusion  of  Hooker's  latest  successor  in  the  gospel 
ministry  at  this  altar  (and  long  may  he  be  the  latest)  "  It 
is  impossible  not  to  recognize  the  master  hand.  It  dimin- 
ishes nothing  of  the  proper  honor  of  Roger  Ludlow  to  say 
that  the  pastor  of  the  Hartford  church  was  Connecticut's 
great  legislator  also  ; "  and  the  like  verdict  expressed  in 
Historian  Johnston's  glowing  sentence :  "  It  is  on  the 
banks  of  the  Connecticut,  under  the  mighty  preaching  of 
Thomas  Hooker,  and  in  the  Constitution  to  which  it  gave 
life,  if  not  form,  that  we  draw  the  first  breath  of  that  atmos- 
phere which  is  now  so  familiar  to  us  ;"  likewise  the  order 
in  eulogy  observed  by  Historian  Bancroft,  contemplating 
the  same  matter,  when  he  says,  "They  who  judge  of  men 
by  their  services  to  the  human  race  will  never  cease  to 
honor  the  memory  of  Hooker,  and  will  join  with  it  that  of 
Ludlow,  and  still  more  that  of  Haynes." 

A  very  king  among  men  was  this  father  of  our  common- 
wealth ;  of  the  true  stature  of  majesty  ;  great,  not  only  in 
his  day,  but  great  in  any  day  ;  wb.om  we  may  linger  a  while 
to  survey.  He  stood,  indeed,  not  alone,  but,  pressed  as  we 
are  for  time,  it  is    not  feasible  now    to    attempt,    even    in 


CONNECTICUT  S    I'lRST    CONSTITUTION.  47 

fewest  words,  tt)  call  up  in  review  the  wortliies,  his  associ- 
ates, whose  names  are  linked  with  liis  on  that  shining  page 
of  the  sublime  epic  of  freedom,  which  together  they  in- 
scribed. Yet  to  himself,  their  chief,  it  seems  not  meet  to 
omit  some  more  particular  reference,  though  necessarily  cir- 
cumscribed, than  thus  far  we  have  made. 

He  was  more  than  the  representative  man  of  the  Con- 
necticut colony.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  genius  of 
New  England  was  incarnate  in  his  person.  His  royal 
degree  was  early  recognized.  When  he  died,  in  1647,  John 
Winthrop,  with  whom  he  had  so  differed  in  counsel,  said  of 
him:  "The  fruits  of  his  labors  in  botJi  Itngiands  shall  pre- 
serve an  honorable  and  happy  remembrance  of  him  forever," 
Cotton  Mather,  of  Boston,  writing  a  half  century  later, 
introduces  a  memoir  of  him  in  his  Magiialia  with  saying 
that  as  the  foreign  resident  who  met  his  countryman  in 
Athens,  and  promising  to  show  him  at  once  all  the  wonders 
of  Greece,  showed  him  Solon  "  as  the  person  in  whom  cen- 
tered all  the  glories  of  that  city  or  country,"  so  he  now  in- 
vited his  reader  "  to  behold  at  once  the  wonders  of  New  Eng- 
land, and  it  is  in  one  Thomas  Hooker  that  he  shall  behold 
them." 

No  authentic  portraiture  of  his  person  of  any  sort  has 
come  down  to  us,  but  if  we  may  credit  tradition,  he  was  a 
man  physically  of  a  singular  beauty  of  countenance,  mas- 
siveness  of  mold,  and  mingled  stateliness  and  grace  of  aspect. 
Educated  at  Cambridge  University,  the  hearthstone  of  Puri- 
tanism, and  for  ten  years  or  more  after  his  graduation  resident 
there  as  Fellow,  he  emerged  thence  about  1620,  in  the  prime 
of  manhood,  full  furnished  with  all  liberal  learning,  and 
entered  on  his  career  as  a  clergyman  of  the  church  of 
England;  of  the  Puritan  Non-conformist  school  —  though  he 
was  never  a  Separatist.  It  was  not  long  before  he  displayed 
a  pulpit  power  that  was  phenomenal ;  that  drew  vast  crowds 
to  hear  him  ;  and  that  so  contributed  to  the  ferment  of  the  times 
as  to  provoke  Archbishop  Laud  to  resolve  on  silencing  him. 

The  position  he  had  attained  in  the  public  eye  and  regard, 
and  the  greatness  of  his  influence,  arc  reflected  in  letters  of 


48  2  50TH    AXNIVERSARV    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

information  and  advice  concerning  him  addressed  to  Laud 
by  one  of  his  lieutenants  residing  in  his  neighborhood,  in 
which  he  reports:  "There  be  divers  young  ministers  about 
us  that  spend  their  time  in  conference  with  Mr.  Hooker, 
and  return  home  to  preach  what  he  hath  brewed.  He  is 
their  oracle  and  their  principal  library.  ...  I  have 
lived  in  Essex  to  see  many  changes,  and  have  seen  the 
people  idolizing  many  new  ministers  and  lecturers,  but  this 
man  surpasses  them  all  for  learning  and  some  other  consid- 
erable parts,  and  gains  more  and  far  greater  followers  than 
all  before  him."  Again  he  counsels  the  archbishop  that  it 
would  be  prudence,  if  possible,  to  induce  Mr.  Hooker 
quietly  to  remove,  and  not  suspend  him  from  the  exercise 
of  his  ministry,  since,  in  the  latter  case,  "  his  genius  (he 
says)  will  still  haunt  all  the  pulpits  in  the  country'  where 
any  of  his  scholars  may  be  admitted  to  preach."  When, 
nevertheless,  Laud  set  the  law  in  motion  against  him,  he 
wrote  —  this  same  Vicar  of  Braintree —  "  I  pray  God  direct 
my  Lord  of  London  in  this  weighty  business.  All  men's 
heads,  tongues,  eyes,  and  ears  are  in  London,  and  all  the 
counties  about  London,  taken  up  with  talking,  plotting, 
and  expecting  what  will  be  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Hooker's 
business." 

The  prevailing  repute  of  character  in  which  he  then  stood 
is  sufficiently  testified  by  the  fact,  that  upon  Laud's 
proceedings  being  known,  forty-three  of  the  beneficed 
clerg}-  of  the  church,  all  Conformists,  united  in  a  petition  in 
Hooker's  behalf,  entreating  the  archbishop  to  suffer  him  to 
continue  in  his  liberty,  and  in  his  ministr\%  as  being  to  their 
knowledge,  "for  doctrine,  orthodox,  and  life  and  conversa- 
tion, honest,  and  for  his  disposition,  peaceable,  no  ways  tur- 
bulent or  factious."  But  it  availed  nothing,  and  Hooker 
shortly,  in  1630,  fled  away  to  Holland,  where  he  remained 
for  three  years,  ministering  to  his  fellow  exiles  there,  till  he 
secretly  returned  to  England  to  embark  for  Massachusetts. 

To  that  sojourn  in  Holland,  where  he  saw  republican  lib- 
erty, we  must  suppose  Connecticut  is  in  no  small  measure 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  49 

indebted  for  her  free  birth.  But  also,  and  perhaps  more 
still,  to  his  intimate  relations  there  with  Dr.  William  Ames, 
a  strong  and  deep  thinker  on  the  problem  of  government, 
one  of  the  little-noted  men  who  yet  are  fruitful  sources  of 
events,  and  who,  in  the  judgm.ent  of  some  whose  opinion  is 
entitled  to  weight,  was,  politically  speaking,  the  cause  of 
Thomas  Hooker. 

A  most  lovable  and  lo\-ing  soul,  clothed  with  gentleness 
and  patience,  shedding  around  him  always  the  sweet  atmos- 
phere of  Christian  piety,  was  this  Father  and  Founder  of 
our  State.  Yet  withal  of  a  high  spirit,  a  mar\-elous  energy 
of  mind,  and  strength  of  will.  One  who  knew  him  well  said 
of  him,  "  That  he  had  the  best  command  of  his  own  spirit 
which  he  ever  saw  in  any  man  whatever.  For  though  he  were 
a  man  of  choleric  disposition,  and  had  a  mighty  vigor  and 
fer\'or  of  spirit,  which  as  occasion  served,  was  wondrous  use- 
ful unto  him,  \-et  he  had  ordinarily  as  much  government  of 
his  choler  as  a  man  has  of  a  mastiff  dog  in  a  chain ;  he  could 
let  out  his  dog  and  pull  in  his  dog  as  he  pleased^  And 
another  that,  as  Mather  tells  us,  had  obser\-ed  "  his  heroical 
spirit  and  courage,"  gave  this  account  of  him  :  "He  was  a 
person  w^ho,  w^hile  doing  his  Master's  work,  would  put  a 
King  in  his  pocket." 

The  portrait  might  be  extended  to  other  details ;  but  in 
these  few  lineaments,  supplied  by  the  witness  of  his 
cotemporaries,  we  mark  the  undoubted  features  and  propor- 
tions of  a  prince,  and  discern  the  reason  of  the  figure 
applied  to  him  in  his  own  day,  that  he  was  "  the  one  rich 
j>earl  with  which  Europe  more  than  repaid  America  for  all 
the  treasures  from  her  coast." 

In  the  old  burying-ground  behind  me,  under  the  shadow 
of  the  w'alls  of  this  saiictuar)%  his  dust  mingled  with  that  of 
others  of  his  faithful  generation,  sleeps  Thomas  Hooker,  one 
of  God's  glorious  servants,  one  of  the  finest  heroes  of 
humanity,  to  whom  the  world  is  under  obligation  perpetual 
and  altogether  immeasureable.  The  monument  to  him  of 
bronze  or  marble  which  Connecticut  owes  it  to  herself  to  set 


50  25OTII    ANNIVF.RSARY    OF    TlIK    ADOPTION    OF 

up,  and  wliich  she  will  assuredly  set  up,  is  lacking,  l^ut 
wherever  in  the  earth  citizenship  is  free,  and  men  dwell  in 
their  communities  in  loyalty  to,  and  under  protection  of,  the 
laws  themselves  have  made,  there  is  his  monument. 

Though  I  am  apprehensive  of  having  already  exceeded  my 
appropriate  limit  of  time,  there  are  yet  behind  certain  things 
so  essential  to  any  complete  circuit  of  my  theme,  even  on 
the  strictest  construction  of  its  bounds,  that  I  must  crave 
your  indulgence  while  I  briefly  note  them. 

Especially  one  thing.  We  have  been  speaking  of  the 
adoption  of  her  first  Constitution  as  marking  Connecticut's 
natal  day.  But  the  statement  that  it  did  so,  were  it  meant 
by  it  that  it  marked  the  date  of  the  birth  of  sclf-govcriimcnt 
in  Connecticut,  would  have  to  be  amended.  You  will  recall 
that  mention  was  made  some  way  back  of  a  provision  by  the 
Massachusetts  General  Court,  on  the  eve  of  the  emigra- 
tion, at  the  instance  of  those  departing,  for  the  observance 
of  some  "present  government  "  among  them.  It  consisted 
of  the  appointment  of  a  commission  composed  of  two  from 
each  town,  empowered  to  arbitrate  in  matters  of  general 
concern,  till  such  time  as  the  new  plantation  should  super- 
sede their  function  by  agreeing  on  some  "manner  of  gov- 
ernment "  for  itself — but  in  no  case  was  the  commission  to 
be  of  authority  for  more  than  one  year.  Whether  or  not  it 
fulfilled  that  term  of  office  is  uncertain.  If  not  by  super- 
seding it,  at  any  rate  in  conjunction  with  it,  the  colonists, 
soon  after  their  arrival,  assumed  control  of  their  own  affairs. 
What  order  they  took  in  so  doing  —  how  they  went  about 
the  business  —  the  scanty  record  leaves  us  uninformed. 
But  they  did  it.  "  By  some  process  [as  Dr.  Bacon  says] 
the  government  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  people."  In 
January  the  new  names  of  the  towns  were  decreed,  and 
their  boundaries  fixed,  A  court  was  held,  at  which  elected 
magistrates  were  sworn,  and  public  business  transacted  by 
them,  and  a  body  of  committees  from  the  towns,  three 
from  each;  in  which  binal  assembly  was  evolved  "the 
seminal   principle"    of    the   two    houses    of    our    Legisla- 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    COXSTITUTIOX.  5  I 

ture.  Eight  such  courts  met  prior  to  May  i,  1637.  At  the 
court  of  that  date,  which  was  the  ninth,  and  which  is  the 
first  called  the  "  General  "  Court  in  the  record,  a  draft  of 
troops  was  ordered,  a  tax  levied,  and  a  commander  appointed 
for  the  Pequot  war. 

From  which  it  appears  that  Connecticut  was  a  State,  con- 
scious of  its  existence  and  of  its  powers,  at  least  two  years 
before  the  Constitution.  Whatever  changes  and  modifica- 
tions in  the  system  of  conducting  the  institution  of  self  rule 
the  people,  taught  by  experience,  made,  when  finally  they 
sat  down  to  write  it  out,  nothing  is  more  sure  than  that  the 
framing  of  the  Constitution  was  substantially  but  a  put- 
ting into  law  what  was  already  inaugurated  in  practice; 
and  that  Mr.  Hooker's  sermon  but  the  proclamation  and 
defense  of  principles  that  had  been  from  the  beginning 
operative  in  the  conduct  of  the  colony  affairs. 

It  was  not  the  Constitution  that  made  the  State  ;  but  the 
State  that  made  the  Constitution.  The  State  itself  was 
born,  not  made  ;  born,  viz.,  of  the  people  of  the  three  towns  ; 
being  produced  of  them  under  God,  by  their  untrammeled 
action  in  the  liberty  of  the  wilderness,  in  obdience  to  what 
an  eminent  publicist  of  our  day  has  termed  "the  natural  law 
of  accretion."  That  same  writer  has  pointed  out  as  a  cir- 
cumstance additional  to  those  that  have  been  named  by 
which  the  genesis  of  Connecticut  is  distinguished  from  that 
of  all  other  States,  that  it  was  achieved  in  absence,  at  once  of 
territorial  title  (though  there  was  a  fiction  of  one),  and  of  a 
defined  geography.  It  w^as  to  be  yet  fifteen  years  before  it 
knew  its  boundaries.  It  came  into  being  on  ground  the 
ownership  of  which  was  at  any  rate  problematical ;  practi- 
cally a  No-Man's  land. 

It  was  the  Town  as  an  organized  community  of  people, 
"the  only  association,"  as  De  Tocqueville  says,  "which 
is  so  perfectly  natural  that  it  seems  to  constitute  itself," 
that,  as  another  has  said,  "is  the  primordial  cell  of  the  body 
politic  "  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  line  of  civilization  ;  in  the  mu- 
nicipal independence  of  which  the  sovereignty  of  the  people 


52  25OTH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    AOOPTIOX    OF 

becomes  originally  operative  ;  from  which,  aL;'ain  De  Toc- 
quevillc  observes,  "  the  impulsion  ol  political  activity " 
springs  ;  it  was  the  three  towns  of  our  colony,  which  were 
three  as  three  men  are  three,  that  under  unique  conditions 
of  freedom  generated  the  life  of  our  commonwealth,  and 
struck  it  into  existence.    Which  is  to  be  forever  remembered. 

I  should  travel  beyond  the  province  of  my  theme,  and 
quite  beyond  the  province  of  my  competency,  if  I  ventured 
an  opinion  touching  the  system  of  legislative  representation 
that  is  best  to  conserve  justice  and  the  public  welfare  in 
Connecticut  in  these  changed  times  ;  or  that  will  be  here- 
after. But  no  one  will  dispute  me  when  I  say  that  so  long 
as  the  Three  Vines  remain  upon  her  seal,  if  any  State  of 
the  Union  has  reason  to  magnify  the  claims  of  the  town  and 
to  be  jealous  of  aught  that  will  subtract  from  its  conse- 
quence as  a  factor  in  the  body  politic,  it  is  the  State  of 
Connecticut. 

The  history  —  the  great  history  —  of  our  first  Constitution 
since  its  adoption,  upon  which  I  had  designed  and  hoped 
somewhat  to  dwell,  I  am  forced  reluctantly  to  pass  and 
hasten  to  an  end. 

Some  months  hence,  during  this  present  year,  is  to  occur 
the  celebration  of  the  centenary  of  our  National  Constitu- 
tion. It  is  altogether  fitting  that  this  of  ours  shall  have  pre- 
ceded it ;  for  that  Constitution  was  most  distinctly  and 
definitely  of  the  extraction  and  lineage  of  the  one  our  fathers 
made  so  long  before. 

In  the  review  of  the  stormy  scenes  of  the  convention 
which  framed  the  system  of  our  Federal  Government,  so 
marked  by  the  clash  and  struggle  of  opposing  schemes,  to 
which  that  larger  occasion  will  lead,  it  will  transpire  —  we 
may  trust  perspicuously,  as  it  will  deserve  to  —  that  at  a 
point  of  crisis  when  the  two  contending  parties  stood  at  a 
deadlock,  with  no  prospect  of  release  from  it,  and  the  conven- 
tion was  doubting  if  it  must  not  go  home  without  a  result, 
Roger  Sherman,  Oliver  Ellsworth,  and  William  Samuel 
Johnson,  delegates  from  Connecticut,  stood  forth,  and  by 
proposing,   and   in   the  event  procuring,    the  acceptance  of 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  53 

what  is  called  "The  Connecticut  Compromise,"  caused  the 
knot  of  difficulty  to  be  loosed.  And  it  will  transpire 
further,  that  that  action  thus  brought  about,  amounted,  in 
effect,  to  the  "grafting  [to  use  Prof.  Johnston's  expression] 
of  the  Connecticut  system  on  the  stock  of  the  old  confeder- 
ation;" that  by  it  "her  combination  of  commonwealth  and 
town  rights"  was  reproduced  "in  a  similar  combination  of 
national  and  State  rights  "  in  the  fundamental  structure  of 
the  new  government.  And  this,  he  declares,  "  is  the 
crowning  glory  of  the  system  which  Hooker  inaugurated  in 
the  wilderness,  and  of  the  commonwealth  of  Connecticut." 

And  what  qualified  Sherman,  Ellsworth,  and  Johnson 
thus  to  take  the  saving  part  of  mediators  at  a  juncture  so 
momentous,  was  the  fact  that  they  were  Connecticut  men  — 
were  of  a  race  bred  up  on  this  soil  under  that  system  ; 
wonted  to  it ;  acquainted  with  its  workings.  We  of  Con- 
necticut are  entitled  to  expect  as  the  fruit  of  the  public 
re-perusal  of  that  passage  of  our  country's  annals,  a  bright- 
ening in  the  eyes  of  the  whole  nation,  of  the  honors  of  our 
little  State,  and  of  its  founders. 

A  mighty  voice  it  was,  that  of  Thomas  Hooker,  crying  in 
the  wilderness  in  the  days  of  things,  to  look  at,  how  small ! 
foreordained  in  the  blossoming  to  be  revealed,  how  great ! 
How  far  it  has  been  heard  !  How  living  are  its  echoes 
still !  An  undying  voice  in  this  world  !  Abraham  Lincoln's 
immortal  speech  on  the  battlefield  of  Gettysburg  is  but  one 
of  its  reverberations.  Thank  God,  for  all  the  preparing  of 
the  ways  and  straightening  of  the  paths  before  the  feet  of 
advancing  humanity,  of  which,  under  His  divine  providence, 
hitherto,  and,  we  must  believe  in  histories  yet  to  unfold,  it 
was  prophetic. 

Yes,  thank  God.  QUI  TRANSTULIT  SUSTINET. 
That  QUI,  as  our  fathers  meant  it,  was  their  motto's 
regnant  word.  And  it  becomes  their  children  in  all  gene- 
rations to  maintain  it  so  ;  and  by  the  vast  ever  broadening 
and  benignant  harvest  of  the  seed  they  sowed  in  weakness, 
as  from  age  to  age  it  grows  before  their  eyes,  to  worship 
their  fathers'  God. 


54  250TH    ANNIVERSARY    OF      lllli    ADOPTION    OF 

The  morning  exercises  were  conchuled  by 

DOXOLOGY. 
Benediction  by 

Rev.  FRANCIS  GOODWIN. 


Connecticut's  first  constitution.  55 


EVENING   EXERCISES 


oKeacjenQLj   o^   Mu)l)Ic. 


Hon.  J.  Hammond  Trumbull,  President  of  the  Con- 
necticut Historical  Society,  came  to  the  front  of  the  stage, 
and  said  that  he  was  gratified  to  see  so  many  ladies  and  gentle- 
men present  on  such  a  rainy  evening,  and  that  it  gave  him 
pleasure  to  appoint  as  chairman  of  the  evening,  a  townsman 
who  needed  no  introduction  to  a  Hartford  audience,  Hon. 
Henry  C.  Robinson. 


ADDRESS. 

BY    H.   C.    ROBINSON. 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : 

Were  the  United  States  France,  and  were  the  city  of 
Hartford  the  city  of  Paris,  our  sky  to-night  would  glow  with 
fireworks,  our  streets  would  blossom  with  wreathed  columns 
and  arches,  our  parks  would  be  picturesque  with  uniformed 
soldiers,  and  the  air  would  be  filled  with  the  echoes  of  can- 
non and  bells,  and  the  shouts  of  wild  enthusiasm !  But  ours 
and  theirs  are  different  ancestors.  Our  joy  is  not  hero-wor- 
ship. We  are  not  looking  back  across  a  quarter  of  a  millen- 
nium to  the  flash  of  a  sword.  There  are  events  in  human 
history  which  are  too  sacred  to  be  honored,  or  get  honor  at 
all,  from  the  mere  flash  of  bayonets  or  the  rattle  of  drums. 
Far  be  it  from  me  to  say  one  word  against  enthusiasm  or 
demonstrations  of  it.  Symbolism  is  a  necessity,  and  it  is  a 
good  necessity.  We  would  not  hinder  the  peal  of  the  bell, 
nor  throttle  the  noise  of  a  single  cannon.  But  they  who 
met  250  years  ago  to  prepare  a  written  constitution,  which 
should  control  the  first  free  representative  democracy  of  his- 
tory, did  a  thing  which  invokes  in  us  a  sense  of  the  sacra- 
mental ;  and  there  is  a  hush  within  us  of  all  babble  ;  and 
we  ask  only  for  the  supreme  eloquence  of  love  and  worship, 
which  seeks  not  even  the  aid  of  words  and  phrases,  and  still 
less  the  glamour  of  ornament  and  parade.  Yesterday  we 
took  these  things  as  matters  of  course,  these  blend  pres- 
ences and  absences.  To-day  we  go  to  a  cradle,  and  lo  !  it  is 
a  manger ;  but  there  is  a  birth  there  from  God.  Yesterday, 
I  say,  we  took  these  things  as  a  matter  of  course.  Things 
of  blessing,  think  of  them :  Self-government  ;  a  written 
constitution  ;  justice  open  to  the  humblest  citizen;  cduca- 


58  25OTH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

tion  free  to  all ;  industry  honored  ;  humility  exalted  ;  relig- 
ion supreme.  And  think  of  the  absences  —  of  sword  ;  of 
faggot  ;  the  inquisition  ;  the  star-chamber ;  exile ;  tyranny 
in  despot,  in  church  or  state  —  all  gone.  And  yet,  my 
friends,  we  were  born  into  all  these  good  things  —  born  into 
them  as  we  were  born  into  the  sunlight  and  the  clear,  pure 
air.  We  have  made  no  struggle  for  them,  we  have  made 
little  struggle  to  retain  them  —  we  were  born  into  them. 
But  they,  the  founders,  were  not.  When  one  has  tempo- 
rarily lost  sight  by  some  curtain  that  has  dropped  upon  his 
eyes  for  weeks  or  months  by  the  spell  of  disease,  he  first 
learns  what  it  is  to  be  blind.  When  a  political  exile  has 
worked  out  a  year  of  life  in  the  frosts  of  Siberia,  he  learns 
to  know  what  liberty  is. 

I  am  not  here  to-night  to  tell  the  story  of  that  day  ;  it  has 
been  told  in  a  masterly  way  this  afternoon  by  our  orator.  I 
shall  not  attempt  to  repeat  it.  But  we  come  for  a  few  con- 
gratulations, as  we  look  back  to  that  early  hour  here  again 
to-night,  in  the  few  minutes  that  we  spend  together,  and,  as 
we  look  back  there,  we  sec,  first  of  all,  that  the  fathers 
organized  a  pure  democracy.  Plato  and  Aristotle  —  I  will 
not  say  the  great  men  of  their  day,  but  great  men  of  all 
days,  abhorred  democracy.  The  democracy  that  they  saw 
and  hated  was  the  rule  of  the  mob  —  a  mob  that  banished 
Aristides.  The  republic  of  Rome,  when  it  came  into  liber- 
ties and  elected  Tribunes,  was  again  the  rule  of  the  mob  ; 
and  the  Tribunes  gave  way  for  the  Caesars.  The  republic 
of  France,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  was  still  again  the  rule 
of  a  mob.  And  the  Italian  Bonaparte  built  his  empire  on 
its  ruins.  Ours  was  a  pure  democracy,  but  it  shunned  the 
evils  of  Greece  and  Rome,  and  took  its  form  from  the  coun- 
try from  whence  it  sprung. 

It  was  more  than  that  —  it  was  a  representative  democ- 
racy. Here  again  the  fathers  went  away  from  the  evils  of 
the  older  States,  and  took  a  step  in  the  line  of  English 
thought  and  English  liberty. 

But,  still  more  than  either,  it  was  a  democracy  under  a  writ- 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  59 

ten  law  —  a  written  organic  constitution.  Democracy,  no 
less  than  monarchy,  needs  the  limitations  of  a  written 
constitution.  The  occasional  will  of  the  majority,  born  of 
passion,  or  of  the  influence  of  a  demagogue,  or,  perhaps,  of 
a  man  in  uniform,  may  beat  down  the  most  sacred  things  in 
the  family,  in  property,  or  in  freedom  of  thought,  unless  re- 
strained by  the  good  letter  of  organic  law.  There  have 
been  democracies  that  had  no  written  constitution.  The  re- 
public of  France,  of  which  I  spoke  a  few  minutes  ago,  was  a 
pure  democracy,  and  it  wrote  beautiful  legends,  liberty, 
equality,  and  fraternity,  but  it  was  restrained  by  no  organic 
law.  And  what  was  the  result  ?  The  revenges  stored  in 
the  hearts  of  the  people  of  France,  treasured  up  for  centu- 
ries, against  the  tyrannies  of  bourbonism,  ran  riot  in  streams 
of  volcanic  wrath,  and  the  wayfarer,  as  he  walked  through 
the  streets  of  Paris,  stained  his  boot  with  blood. 

Once  more,  this  written  constitution  of  which  I  speak  was 
made  by  the  people.  It  was  in  no  sense  either  a  grant  or  a 
concession  by  any  municipality.  Much  has  been  said  to- 
day, much  has  been  said  in  other  days,  in  honor  of  our  Con- 
necticut town  system.  Too  much  can  never  be  said.  As  a 
civilizing  agency,  developing  the  individual  and  the  individ- 
ual community,  it  cannot  be  too  highly  praised,  and  chiefly, 
because  it  has  impressed  upon  civil  government  the  supreme 
importance  of  home  rule  in  local  affairs  ;  and,  in  so  doing,  it 
has  exercised  a  great  restraining  power  in  keeping  down  to 
a  minimum  the  tutelage  of  the  general  government,  even 
when  that  general  government  was  of  the  people.  But,  my 
friends,  this  sacred  ordinance,  which  we  honor  to-day,  moved 
not  from  the  towns,  but  from  the  people.  There  was  no 
notion  in  the  minds  of  any  of  the  fathers,  nor  could  there 
have  been,  that  such  a  thing  as  sovereignty  existed  in  mu- 
nicipalities. They  had  seen  no  such  plantation  or  town. 
The  town  of  which  they  knew  owed  allegiance  to  the 
crown  and  a  faint  allegiance  to  Parliament.  These  towns 
of  the  Connecticut  Valley,  discarding  all  sovereignty  of 
the   crown,    and  all   sovereignty  of    Parliament,  recognized 


6o  25OTII    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

the  sovereignty  of  the  people  ;  and,  while  I  would  defer  to 
no  man  in  my  honor  of  the  town,  it  seems  to  me  a  super- 
ficial study  of  history  and  political  philosophy,  which  insists 
that  the  towns  granted  or  withheld  anything  from  the  peo- 
ple in  the  original  constitution  of  Connecticut.  The  towns 
reserv^ed  no  sovereignty,  they  had  none  to  reserve.  And 
from  1639  until  the  present  time,  under  the  original  funda- 
mental orders,  under  the  charter,  and  under  the  constitution 
of  1 81 8,  the  towns  have  had  no  power,  except  as  it  was  given 
them  by  the  organic  law  or  by  the  general  court  represent- 
ing the  whole  people.  That  general  court,  with  great  wis- 
dom, has  always  left  to  the  town  its  internal  arrangements, 
its  family  affairs,  so  to  say,  so  has  our  legislation  honored 
the  good  maxim,  that  that  government  is  best  which  governs 
least. 

I  have  spoken  of  ours  as  a  pure  democracy.  These 
founders  came  out  from  the  noble  old  colony  of  Massachu- 
setts ;  but  what  did  they  leave  behind  them  ?  By  no 
means,  and  by  no  manner  of  means,  an  advance  in  human 
thought  equal  to  what  they  brought  with  them.  There  they 
left  an  attachment  to  monarchy ;  there  they  left  an  attach- 
ment to  aristocracy ;  there  they  left  the  theory  that  the 
only  persons  fit  to  participate  in  public  affairs  were  they 
who  had  a  certain  ecclesiastical  standing.  Our  fathers 
brought  no  such  thoughts  here.  In  this  organic  instrument 
there  is  no  allusion  by  name  or  title  to  any  monarchy,  or  to 
an  aristocracy,  and  no  church  membership  was  imposed 
upon  citizenship  in  Connecticut.  Their  servility  yielded  to 
allegiance,  loyalty  to  a  jDcrsonal  monarch  became  devotion 
to  pure  law, 

I  have  spoken  of  this  one  as  the  first  written  constitution 
of  a  pure  representative  democracy.  It  is  true.  But  he 
would  be  an  ungrateful  and  unworthy  son  of  New  England, 
who,  in  eulogizing  the  fathers,  forgot  to  withhold  that  im- 
mense measure  of  gratitude  which  every  citizen  of  New 
England  and  every  friend  of  freedom  everywhere  has  to-day, 
or  ought  to  have,  when  he  remembers  the  immense  indebt- 


Connecticut's  first  constitution.  61 

edness  of  human  liberty  to  the  English  common  law.  The 
great  charter,  executed  on  that  little  island  in  the  Thames, 
and  the  "  Law  of  the  land,"  antedating  the  charter  by  centu- 
ries, and  which  was  the  birthright  of  Englishmen,  were  sure 
prophecies  of  the  Connecticut  constitution  of  1639,  '^^^^  ^^^^ 
federal  constitution  of  1787.  It  is  not  strange,  but  it  is 
memorable,  that  the  genius  of  our  government  has  called 
from  the  old  world  three  monumental  pieces  of  literatvire  : 
One,  the  famous  history  of  democracy,  by  the  illustrious 
Frenchman,  DeTocqueville,  written  more  than  fifty  years 
ago ;  another,  the  scholarly  analysis  of  our  constitutional 
government  by  the  German,  Dr.  Von  Hoist  ;  and,  last  of  all, 
the  most  fascinating  analysis  of  our  country  and  all  that  is 
ours  in  a  strange  and  beautiful  philosophy  by  Prof.  Bryce 
of  Scotland. 

And,  si^eaking  of  Scotland,  as  I  came  in  here  to-night  I 
could  but  remember  that  some  of  us  were  prevented  by  this 
greater  occasion  from  going  to  another  occasion  of  festivity 
in  our  immediate  neighborhooci^conducted  by  our  friends  of 
Scottish  birth  and  ancestry.  They  meet  to-night  in  an  adjoin- 
ing hall  to  commemorate  the  anniversary  of  their  great  poet  ; 
and  as  I  thought  of  him  and  this  occasion,  and  remembered 
the  things  he  had  wTitten  in  matchless  verse,  it  seemed  to 
me  that,  after  all,  his  greatness  is  greatest  in  that  he  was 
the  poet  of  the  people.  He  was  the  man  who  dared  to  look 
and  see,  and  sing  for  the  rights  of  man  in  sweetest  strain. 
He  looked  through  the  "  rank,"  which  is  but  a  token,  the 
"guinea  stamp,"  to  the  pure  gold  itself,  which  is  "the  man." 
And  so  let  our  Scotch  people  go  on  with  their  eloquence, 
and  dance  in  memory  of  Bobbie  Burns,  and  they  are  cel- 
ebrating with  us  the  cause  of  civil  liberty  and  human 
freedom. 

If  we  look  back  250  years  to  that  time  when  the  fathers 
met  together,  it  seems  a  simple  scene.  They  were  simple 
souls.  They  were  unconscious  of  their  own  greatness. 
They  were  poor ;  they  were  hungry  ;  they  were  surrounded 
by  all  kinds  of  hostilities  of  nature  ;  and,  least  of  all,  had 


62  25OTH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION:    OF 

they  an)'  kind  of  conception  of  the  <;rancleur  of  their  own 
creation,  whose  genial  blessings  liavc  radiated,  like  the 
beams  of  the  sun,  to  every  zone.  If  we  look  back  at  that 
scene  of  250  years  ago,  and  then  look  at  our  nation  as  it  is 
to-day,  with  its  inconceivably  great  resources,  its  wealth,  its 
power  for  all  that  is  good  and  true  and  beautiful  in  human 
life,  its  leadership  in  political  thought,  we  can  only  say  of  it 
that  it  is  the  one  supreme,  inexplicable,  glorious  miracle  in 
human  history.  That  picture  I  shall  leave  to  be  described 
by  the  eloquent  lips  for  which  we  all  are  waiting, 

Mr.  Robinson  : 

Historians  and  scholars  differ  about  the  question,  whether  the 
chief  credit  for  the  original  constitution  is  to  be  given  to  Thomas 
Hooker  or  to  Roger  Ludlow.  Roger  Ludlow's  name  appears 
first  in  all  the  gatherings  of  the  judges  before  the  constitution, 
and  many  scholars  attribute  to  him  the  inspiration  of  that  docu- 
ment, and  most  scholars  credit  him  with  its  language.  More 
recent  scholarship  has  credited  its  inspirations  chiefly  to  the 
divine.  We  are  fortunate  in  ln^'ing  one  with  us  to-night  who  car- 
ries the  blood  of  old  Thomas  Hooker  in  his  veins  and  who  is 
also  a  distinguished  honor  to  the  profession,  which  Mr.  Ludlow 
honored,  and  I  take  pleasure  in  introducing  John  Hooker,  Esq., 
of  Hartford. 


Connecticut's  first  constituiion.  63 


ADDRESS. 

BY  JOHN  HOOKER. 

Mr.  President,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : 

The  planting  of  a  State  is  always  a  subject  of  interest. 
Its  history  is  generally  one  of  adventure  and  heroism,  and 
we  read  it  as  we  would  a  romance.  This  is  generally  so 
where  mere  temporal  advantage  was  the  ruling  motive,  but 
the  subject  becomes  one  of  profound  interest  where  there 
predominated  a  great  moral  purpose.  Such  a  purpose  en- 
tered into  the  planting  of  our  State,  and  of  all  New  England, 
even  though  they  did  not  dream  they  were  sowing  the  seeds 
of  empire,  and  we  do  well  to  honor  these  noble  founders. 
They  were  wise  men  in  their  day,  and  laid  foundations  deep 
and  strong,  and  we  may  study  the  history  of  the  time  for  the 
mere  wisdom  that  it  teaches.  But  we  miss  its  great  lesson 
if  we  do  not  study,  and  understand,  and  become  inspired  by, 
the  spirit  of  those  grand  men.  They  came  here  in  the  fear 
of  God,  and  holding  their  first  allegiance  due  to  him.  And 
though  they  had  a  perpetual  struggle  for  existence,  against 
savages,  against  most  rigorous  winters,  against  the  most 
scanty  supplies  of  the  necessaries  of  life,  they  found  time  and 
heart  to  look  to  the  future,  and  felt  their  responsibility  for 
the  character  of  that  future.  The  church,  he  school,  the 
college,  a  wise  system  of  government  —  all  that  could  affect 
the  moral  welfare  of  their  descendants  —  these  were  the 
things  that  they  thought  of  and  labored  for.  They  had 
sometimes  their  petty  ambitions,  their  jealousies  and  rival- 
ries, for  they  were  but  human  ;  but  there  was  a  great  pervad- 
ing enthusiasm  to  establish  an  intelligent  and  God-fearing 
people.     All  honor,  therefore,  to  those  bra\^e,  good  men. 


64  250TH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOI'TION    OF 

But  wc  ought  not  to  foi\o;ot  that  \vc  nrc  all,  iii  a  sense,  if 
not  founders,  yet  builders.  We,  as  they,  liuild  for  the  next 
generation,  and  the  next,  and  the  great  lesson  vvc  are  to 
learn  from  them  is,  that  we  are  to  build,  as  they  did,  with  a 
i^reat  moral  purpose.  No  man  can  live  for  himself  alone; 
but  wc  may  make  our  lives  morally  worthless  if  we  live  in 
the  mere  present,  seeking  our  own  personal  success  in  life, 
and  not  striving  to  make  the  world  better  for  our  having 
lived  in  it.  There  are  noble  men  and  women  living  to-day, 
grand  souls,  who  by  their  toil  and  self-sacrifice  have  helped 
to  set  the  world  forward.  But  how  manifest  is  it  that  the 
vast  majority  of  men,  even  in  this  Christian  land,  and  men 
of  intelligence  and  social  position,  are  living  but  little  above 
a  material  plane  ;  certainly  with  no  thought  of  any  allegiance 
owed  to  God,  or  of  any  duty  to  make  warfare  upon  the 
powers  of  evil. 

Let  us  then  be  builders  with  a  high  moral  purpose.  All 
this  is  easy  exhortation ;  almost  common-place.  But  I  beg 
you,  in  the  few  minutes  allowed  me,  to  follow  me  through  a 
certain  philosophy  that  attends  the  matter  of  building  up  a 
truly  Christian  society. 

I.  And,  in  the  first  place,  the  work  of  up-building  is  a 
work  of  Reform.  The  true  builder  is  a  reformer.  The  re- 
form of  a  hundred  years  ago,  reaching  then  the  high-water 
mark  of  the  progressive  thought  of  the  time,  becomes  the 
conservatism  of  to-day,  and  the  reformer  of  to-day  must 
build  higher.  The  true  reformer  is  not  necessarily  an  icon- 
oclast. Sometimes  he  has  to  be.  Thus  the  reformer  fleze- 
kiah  "brake  in  pieces  the  brazen  serpent  that  Moses  had 
made,  for  the  children  of  Israel  did  burn  incense  to  it ;  and 
he  called  it  Nehushtan,"  —  that  is  —  only  a  piece  of  brass. 
It  once  represented  a  vital  truth,  but  the  life  had  all  gone 
out  of  it,  and  the  Jews  had  made  a  mere  fetish  of  it.  But 
in  the  composition  of  a  genuine  reformer  there  is  ordinarily 
no  quality  of  destructiveness.  He  is  in  the  truest  sense  a 
builder.  So  far  as  he  would  destroy  some  entrenched  wrong, 
it  is  merely  the  overthrow  of  that  which  is  itself  a  usurpa- 


Connecticut's  first  constitution.  65 

tioii,  and  the  re-establishment  of  that  which  is  a  dethroned 
right,  or  which  rests  upon  clear,  but  disregarded,  principles 
of  right.  This  is  illustrated  in  the  overthrow  of  slavery  in 
this  country.  The  spirit  which  assailed  it  was  not  one  of 
destructiveness,  but  a  spirit  of  up-building,  of  lifting  de- 
throned manhood  to  its  rightful  place.  The  ordinary  idea 
of  a  reformer  is  of  a  pugnacious  man,  who  carries  around  a 
moral  shillalah  ;  whereas,  in  fact,  he  is  generally  a  member 
of  a  peace  society  ;  or  of  a  morose  and  gloomy  man  ;  whereas, 
he  may  be,  and  sometimes  is,  overflowing  with  wit  and 
humor,  and  the  best  sort  of  company.  All  that  specially 
marks  him  is  a  burning  enthusiasm  for  humanity.  I  know 
no  truer  women,  in  all  that  goes  to  make  true  womanhood, 
than  those  who,  as  the  Women's  Christian  Temperance 
Union,  are  carrying  on  a  war  against  the  saloons. 

2.  The  true  reformer,  in  the  second  place,  is  never  satis- 
fied with  mere  expedients  and  make-shifts.  These  have 
their  place,  and  it  is  often  absolutely  necessary  to  resort  to 
them.  But  when  the  immediate  exigency  is  passed  the  true 
reformer  goes  to  work  to  remove  the  cause.  He  considers 
not  merely  conditions,  but  theories.  He  studies  and  seeks 
to  apply  fundamental  principles.  Compromises  are  often 
not  only  expedient  but  just.  They  enter  largely  into  the 
framework  of  society.  But  a  compromise  with  some  vice, 
no  matter  how  entrenched,  merely  postpones  an  inevi- 
table struggle  with  it.  Unsettled  questions  of  right,  it  has 
been  said,  have  no  mercy  for  the  peace  of  nations.  Com- 
promises with  slavery  only  postponed,  and  in  the  end  made 
more  terrible,  the  final  death  struggle  of  freedom  with  it. 
When  the  anarchists  were  hung  in  Chicago,  their  execution 
was  an  expedient.  No  wrong,  fancied  or  real,  could  justify 
their  dynamite  war  on  society,  and  there  was  no  way  but  to 
deal  with  them  with  a  strong  hand.  But  the  danger  to 
society  from  the  anarchy  of  the  hovel  is  not  so  great  as  that 
from  the  anarchy  of  the  palace.  There  will  always  be  a 
determination  to  suppress  disorder.  Life,  property,  all 
prosperity,  rest  for  their  security  on  social  order,  and  the 
9 


66  25OTH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

nation  would  rise  by  a  common  impulse  to  put  clown  any  or- 
ganized attack  upon  it.  But  the  most  dangerous  anarchy  — 
and  the  more  dangerous  because  it  does  not  come  in  conflict 
with  the  spirit  of  order  —  is  that  of  the  men,  who,  by  com- 
bination and  by  the  power  of  money,  control  our  legislation, 
or  pervert  it  where  they  cannot  wholly  control  it,  or  where 
they  can  do  neither,  lubricate,  by  the  use  of  their  money, 
some  hole  of  escape.  They  do  not  terrorize  society ;  it  is 
no  part  of  their  object  to  terrorize  anybody ;  but  the 
thoughtful  lover  of  his  country,  and  of  equality  and  justice, 
looks  on  with  the  gravest  apprehension.  When  the  true 
builder  of  society  has  discharged  his  painful  duty  toward  the 
men  of  violence  and  blood,  he  addresses  himself  to  his  higher 
and  more  serious  duty  to  this  more  dangerous  class,  and  sees 
that  a  correction  of  what  is  wrong  here  will  largely  remove 
the  cause  of  the  plebeian  anarchy. 

3.  The  true  reformer,  in  the  third  place,  builds  upon  the 
foundation  of  old  ideas,  but  the  superstructure  is  of  new- 
ideas,  or  of  ideas  that  have  been  overlooked  or  lost,  and  are 
practically  new  to  the  age.  The  case  is  not  unlike  that  of 
our  wonderful  inventions  and  material  improvements  of  all 
sorts.  These  are  generally  but  new  uses  of  natural  forces 
that  have  existed  from  the  foundation  of  the  world.  And  up- 
on our  discoveries  and  inventions  a  later  age  will  build  a 
like  superstructure  of  its  own.  This  is  true  evolution.  So 
it  is  with  moral  and  religious  ideas.  The  old  Roman  who, 
as  a  magistrate,  could  coolly  condemn  his  son  to  death, 
could  never  have  got  from  the  declarations  of  Scripture 
as  to  God's  fatherly  love,  the  same  conception  of  it  that 
a  father  to-day  gets.  The  new  conception  as  compared 
with  the  old,  is  practically  a  new  truth.  Yet  the  ideas  of 
both  would  have  the  same  foundation.  So  I  say  we 
build  in  our  day  with  ideas  that  are  practically  new  in  our 
day,  though  all  resting  on  old  foundations.  Take  the  relig- 
ious dogmas  of  two  centuries  ago ;  where  are  many  of  them 
to-day  ?  and  even  some  of  those  most  tenaciously  held  ?  yet 
all  were  built,  according  to  the  intelligence  of  the  age,  on 
that  everlasting  foundation,  the  Gospel  of  Christ. 


Connecticut's  first  constitution.  Gj 

Our  Lord  told  us  that  the  Spirit  of  Truth  would  come 
(involving  the  idea  of  a  new  arrival),  and  would  guide  us 
into  all  truth.  This  involves  the  idea  of  progression  in 
the  guide  and  in  the  follower ;  and  progress  too  in  truth 
itself.  Paul  told  us  to  "  serve  in  the  newness  of  the  spirit, 
and  not  in  the  oldness  of  the  letter.''  The  spirit  is  ever  new 
and  ever  progressive,  and  leaves  the  letter  far  behind.  I 
was  once  in  Geneva  on  the  fourth  of  July,  and  in  that  home 
of  Calvin  gave  as  a  toast  — "  John  Calvin  as  he  would  be 
if  he  were  here  to-day."  That  grand,  brave,  sturdy  old  man, 
if  here  to-day,  would,  I  verily  believe,  hardly  pass  an  accept- 
able examination  in  Calvinism.  The  world  of  religious 
thought  moves,  though  it  still  revolves  and  will  ever  revolve, 
around  the  great  central  source  of  all  light. 

4.  There  is  a  great  duty  on  the  part  of  sober  and  intelli- 
gent men,  not  to  stand  aloof  from,  but  to  fraternize  with, 
and  guide,  that  less  intelligent,  and  often  too  impatient  and 
so  too  hasty  and  impetuous  spirit  of  reform  which  almost 
always  shows  itself  in  connection  witli  true  reforms.  It 
is  extravagant  and  often  fanatical,  but  is  well-intentioned  and 
needs  to  be  guided  and  not  discouraged  or  suppressed.  The 
world  would  never  move  if  there  were  not  some  men  so 
zealous  as  to  go  too  far.  What  a  force  there  is,  if  rightly 
directed  and  controlled,  in  the  Salvation  Army.  Benjamin 
Du  Plan  —  the  "Gentleman  of  Alias,"  as  he  was  called, 
who  lived  in  the  south  of  France  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago,  was  a  noble  specimen  of  a  true  reformer  in  the  highest 
social  position  joining  with  extravagant  zealots,  because 
he  knew  they  were  on  the  Lord's  side.  The  Hartford 
Cotirant,  in  an  editorial  notice  of  his  life,  recently  published, 
says  :  "  To  be  a  Protestant  was  to  be  an  outcast  in  every 
way.  It  was  this  lot  that  young  Du  Plan  chose  for  his 
worldly  portion.  The  reader  will  not  be  surprised  to  learn 
that  there  was  Protestant  fanaticism  as  well  as  Catholic 
bigotry,  and  that  there  were  abnormal  developments  of 
religious  zeal.  Many  women  and  girls  took  up  the  character 
of  prophetesses  and  preachers,  fell  down  in  ccslacies,  and 


68  25OTH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

went  through  all  the  scandals  of  fantastic  demeanor  and 
imposture.  Du  Plan  was  deterred  from  his  choice  neither 
by  the  extravagance  of  some  of  the  sect,  nor  by  the  perse- 
cutions. It  is  largely  owing  to  his  labors  that  the  French 
Protestant  chnrch  is  alive  to-day ^ 

5.  And  this  brings  me,  in  the  fifth  place,  to  a  point 
which  I  conceive  it  to  be  very  important  to  have  fully  under- 
stood. It  is  that  new  ideas,  especially  on  moral  and  religious 
subjects,  which  are  finally  accepted  as  God's  own  truth, 
find  at  the  outset  their  most  determined  antagonists  in 
the  church  and  among  really  good  men.  I  am  not  speaking 
against  good  men  as  such ;  to  nobody  are  they  dearer  than 
to  me.  I  am  not  speaking  against  the  church ;  few 
love  the  church  more.  But  I  am  speaking  of  a  fact,  and 
speaking  from  the  study  of  history  and  the  observations  of 
a  long  life.  The  fact  seems  on  its  face  almost  incomprehen- 
sible, yet  is  easily  explained. 

In  the  first  place,  almost  every  advance  is  in  the  direction 
of  larger  liberty  —  liberty  of  thought,  liberty  of  action,  of 
less  responsibility  to  mere  law  and  more  to  one's  own  soul, 
the  grandest  of  responsibilities.  Now  liberty  is  near  neigh- 
bor to  license,  and  every  man  of  loose  morals  takes  the  side 
of  liberty  against  restraint.  And  not  merely  the  bad  men, 
but  all  the  men  of  courageous  thinking  who  have  already 
antagonized  prevailing  beliefs.  Take  the  universal  belief  of 
a  hundred  years  ago  that  the  world  was  made  in  six  days,  by 
six  successive  fiats  of  God,  and  that  the  Scripture  so  taught. 
Thirty  years  after  science  had  clearly  established  the  fact 
that  the  world  was  thousands  of  years  in  being  made,  there 
were  probably  twenty  outside  of  the  churches  who  accepted 
this  as  the  truth  where  there  was  one  in  the  churches. 
And  the  former  were  regarded  as  little  better  than  infidels. 
But  God's  truth  was  with  the  infidels,  and  the  error  was 
with  his  people.  Again,  take  the  question  of  future  proba- 
tion. (I  do  not  propose  to  touch  the  merits  of  the  question.) 
Almost  every  bad  man  favors  the  idea.  He  sees  in  it  deliv- 
erance  for  himself.     He  sees  in  it  license.     Yet  the  man 


Connecticut's  first  constitution.  69 

who  desires  only  to  know  what  is  God's  truth  on  the  subject, 
is  allowing  himself  to  be  led  astray  if  he  lets  himself  be 
influenced  by  the  consideration  that  all  bad  men  accept  the 
new  idea,  and  the  great  majority  of  good  men  reject  it. 
Early  in  this  century  Sir  Samuel  Romilly,  one  of  the  noblest 
men  England  has  ever  known,  then  a  member  of  Parliament, 
set  out  to  reform  the  criminal  law  of  England  by  abolishing 
the  death  penalty  for  petty  offences.  A  body  of  acts  which, 
voted  down  overwhelmingly  at  first,  he  by  great  effort 
and  long  persistence  finally  got  passed,  is  known  as  the 
"Romilly  Acts,"  and  England  is  to-day  proud  of  them,  and 
not  one  vote  in  ten  thousand  could  be  got  for  going  back  to 
the  old  law.  Yet  when  he  began  all  society  was  against  him 
—  and  the  church  with  the  rest.  There  was  a  universal 
belief  that  any  letting  up  of  penalty  would  only  increase 
crime.  And  who  were  with  him  ?  Some  good  men  were 
early  gained  over ;  but  every  thief,  every  robber,  every  vile 
man  and  woman,  was  on  his  side.  Yet  God  was  on  the 
same  side  with  the  thieves,  and  not  with  his  people. 

There  is  another  reason  why  the  church  and  good  men 
are  thrown  into  antagonism  to  nascent  truth.  The  church 
rests  on  o/d  ideas.  Its  people  have  been  brought  up  on  them. 
They  think  them  everlasting  truths,  and  that  they  embrace 
all  truth.  They  can  not  realize  that  the  kingship  never 
dies,  though  the  sceptre  may  pass  to  new  hands. 

A  worn-out  dogma  died.     Around  its  bed 
Its  votaries  wept  as  if  all  truth  were  dead. 
But  heaven-born  truth  is  an  immortal  thing. 
Hark,  how  its  lieges  give  it  welcoming  — 
"  The  King  is  Dead —  Long  live  the  King." 

So  the  moment  a  new  idea  is  brought  before  these  good 
people  which  seems  to  conflict  with  what  they  have  been 
taught,  they  bristle  against  it.  Without  ever  examining  the 
question  they  take  a  position  of  antagonism  to  it.  There  is 
often  much  to  respect  in  this  spontaneous  rallying  to  the 
defense  of  old  truths  to  which  they  feel  that  they  owe  an 


yO  25OTH    ANNIVI.RSAKY    OF    THE    ADOPTIOX    OF 

unhesitating  and  unquestioning  allegiance.  I  have  more 
respect  for  a  bigot  than  for  a  mere  surface  indifferentist. 
And  then  these  same  defenders  of  the  church  look  out  upon 
the  supporters  of  the  new  idea  and  see  a  motley  group  of  all 
sorts  —  broad  religionists,  cavillers,  agnostics,  and,  beyond 
these,  all  sorts  of  bad  men,  and  they  think  that  nothing  can 
be  clearer  than  that  they  are  on  the  Lord's  side.  Yet,  in 
most  cases,  a  half-century  later  the  church  will  have  accepted 
the  new  idea  as  God's  truth. 

Let  it  be  understood  then,  that,  as  an  almost  universal 
rule,  new  truths  come  with  a  great  discredit.  It  is  right 
that  there  should  be  a  strong  presumption  against  them,  and 
to  require  that  they  be  supported  by  a  large  preponderance 
of  proof.  But  it  is  more  than  this.  They  encounter  a 
strong,  unreasoning,  often  bitter,  prejudice;  a  prejudice 
that  I  think  is  hateful  to  God ;  for  I  believe  that  God  loves 
above  all  others  the  man  who  loves  truth,  and  is  willing  to 
suffer,  and,  if  need  be,  to  die  for  it.  God  makes  his  truths 
stand  upon  their  own  foundation,  not  on  the  patronage  of 
the  church  or  society.  The  New  York  Nation  said  some 
time  ago,  in  an  article  on  Garrison,  that  no  one  not  living  at 
that  time  could  have  any  idea  of  the  state  of  public  opinion 
when  that  reformer  began  his  work.  It  was  a  few  fanatics 
on  one  side  and  all  society  on  the  other.  I  know  that  to  be 
the  fact,  for  I  was  myself  one  of  the  fanatics.  Where  is 
society  now }  The  old  prophets,  with  their  long  hair,  their 
garments  of  sackcloth,  and  their  denunciatory  proclamations 
in  the  market  places,  were  the  "cranks"  of  their  time,  and 
very  repulsive  ones  too  ;  yet  God  made  them  his  mouth- 
piece. What  more  uncouth  than  John  the  Baptist,  wearing 
a  goat  skin  and  living  on  locusts  and  wild  honey  as  he  wan- 
dered about ;  and  yet  he  was  the  forerunner  and  herald  of 
Christ.  And  when  Christ  came  he  was  called  a  glutton  and 
winc-bibber,  and  was  despised  and  rejected  of  men.  Hear 
what  Paul  says  : 

"  Not  many  wise  after  the  flesh,  not  many  mighty,  not 
many  noble,  are  called ;   but  God  hath  chosen  the  foolish 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIKST    CONSTITUTION.  /I 

things  of  the  world,  that  he  might  put  to  sh;inic  them  that 
are  wise ;  and  God  hath  chosen  the  weak  things  of  the 
world,  that  he  might  put  to  shame  things  that  are  strong ; 
and  the  base  things  of  the  world  and  the  things  that  are 
despised  hath  God  chosen,  yea,  and  things  which  are  not, 
to  bring  to  naught  the  things  that  are."     I.  Cor.,  i,  26-7-8. 

All  who  come  to  save  the  world  must  expect  to  be  assailed 
as  gluttons  and  wine-bibbers,  or  with  other  terms  of  con- 
tempt ;  but  they  will  be  none  the  less  the  commissioned  serv- 
ants of  God.  Remember  then,  ye  who  would  be  builders 
for  God  in  the  state,  in  society,  in  the  church,  that  you  are 
to  encounter  the  sneers  of  society  and  the  antagonism  of 
that  church  which  is  dear  to  us  all,  and  are  to  find  hosts  of 
supporters  with  whom  you  have  little  in  common,  many  of 
whom  you  must  regard  with  utter  disgust,  but  are  to  have 
the  great  comfort  of  feeling  that  God  is  with  you  and  that 
the  future  will  bless  you.  Christ  was  willing  for  the  sake  of 
truth  to  become  of  "no  reputation."     Are  we .-' 

But  let  us  be  comforted  with  the  assurance  that  the  toil 
and  self-abnegation  and  self-sacrifice  of  noble  and  consecra- 
ted souls  will  not  be  lost.  Under  a  great  divine  purpose, 
that  has  run  through  the  ages,  the  world  is  moving  on  to 
the  completeness  of  its  deliverance.  All  redemptions  come 
by  crucifixions.  Blessed  are  the  crucified.  Christ  told  his 
followers  that  in  the  latter  days  there  would  be  a  great 
spiritual  experience  among  men.  Our  greatest  philosopher, 
Fiske,  gives  it  as  the  result  of  his  profound  studies,  that 
man's  physical  development  is  complete,  and  that  his  de- 
velopment in  the  future  is  to  be  of  his  inward  nature.  Thus 
the  last  word  of  the  best  philosophy  of  the  day  accords  with 
the  prophetic  word  of  eighteen  centuries  ago.  And  God's 
word  is  pledged,  and  his  nature  too,  for  the  final  triumph  of 
good. 

There  is  then  a  great  final  good  to  which  the  world  is 
tending,  and  its  progress  toward  which  we  can  aid  by  our 
endeavors.  All  that  poets  have  dreamed,  all  that  seers  have 
beheld  in  their  visions,  is  to  be  finally  realized.     The  king- 


72  25OTH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

doms  of  this  world  arc  to  become  the  kingdoms  of  Christ 
our  Lord. 

I  once,  in  sad  and  thoughtful  mood, 
Stood  in  an  old-world  solitude, 
Amidst  the  scattered  ruins  vast 
Of  a  great  empire  of  the  past. 

But  now,  with  feeling  more  intense, 

I  watch  the  gathering  elements 

Of  a  grand  empire  yet  to  be. 

World-clasping  in  immensity. 

That  empire  shall  be  Love  and  Peace ; 

Its  sway  begun  shall  never  cease ; 

No  drumbeats  shall  its  morns  salute  ; 

No  trumpets  shall  their  clangor  bruit ; 

But,  following  the  circling  sun, 

Each  day  shall  be  with  song  begun  ; 

A  song  of  praise,  Oh  God,  to  Thee  ; 

A  song  that  shall  unbroken  be. 

Save  by  the  deep-toned  anthem  of  the  sea. 


Mr.  Robinson  : 

That  is  the  kind  of  a  lawyer  we  have  in  Hartford !  You  see 
he  can  preach  better  than  the  ministers,  and  write  poetry  better 
than  the  poets ! 


Mr.  Robinson  : 

We  have  heard  a  great  deal  to-day  in  praise  of  the  general 
court,  and  we  can  never  hear  it  praised  too  much.  We  are  for- 
tunate to-night  it  having  its  gifted  speaker  with  us,  and  we  will 
hear  from  John  H.  Perry,  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  ^^ 


ADDRESS. 

BY  SPEAKER  PERRY. 

Mr.  President,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen: 

The  power  of  little  things  has  become  proverbial.  The 
diminutive  beginning  from  which  has  sprung  our  native 
State,  that  prosperous  and  influential  unit  in  the  grandest 
country  upon  earth,  has  inspired  an  eloquence  to-day  which 
is  unexcelled  even  by  that  of  its  unrivalled  founders.  The 
acorn  and  the  mustard  seed  have  begotten  trees  and  meta- 
phors with  striking  impartiality  since  literature  first  began. 

But  among  those  small  things,  the  first  of  which  is  out  of 
all  proportion  to  their  size,  the  misused  monosyllable  bears 
preeminence. 

I  beg  you,  therefore,  to  remember  that  while  with  two 
associates  I  have  the  honor  to  represent  on  this  occasion 
the  lower  branch  of  the  General  Assembly,  I  am  the  Speaker 
of,  and  not  the  Speaker  for,  the  House. 

In  my  official  capacity  nothing  in  the  way  of  speech  mak- 
ing is  expected  of  me,  but  silence,  and  very  little  of  that. 

It  has  occurred  to  me,  however,  since  sitting  here  to-night, 
the  predestined  victim  of  your  monosyllabic  error,  that  after 
all  I  ought  to  be  heard  of  this  audience  briefly,  for  I  repre- 
sent in  the  General  Assembly  that  town  to  which  the  three 
original  towns  which  you  represent  contributed  Roger  Lud- 
low, the  commonly  accredited  author  of  our  ancient  Consti- 
tution. 

Following  the  soldiers  who  on  the  present  site  of  my 
native  village  broke  the  last  remnant  of  Pequot  power  in 
Connecticut,  Roger  Ludlow  founded  Fairfield. 

lO 


74  25OTII    ANXIVKRSARV    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

From  almost  that  day  to  the  present  time  I  have  not 
lacked  an  ancestor  resident  in  the  town. 

I  am  inclined  to  presume,  therefore,  a  little  upon  this  an- 
cient link  of  consinship  between  us. 

Never  having  had  any  constitution  myself  worth  mention- 
ing, I  have  sat  to-day  and  fairly  hugged  myself  to  think  that 
I  belonged  to  something  which  had  one  so  well  worth  cele- 
brating—  a  Constitution  now  replaced  only  because  it  was 
in  part  too  rigorous. 

Whose  vines  have  ever  produced  such  shade  and  fruit  as 
ours  have .'' 

There  is  no  self-governed  nation  on  the  face  of  the  eartli 
to-day  which  does  not  sit  under  their  shade,  and  misses  not 
the  fig  tree. 

But  that  instrument,  the  birth  of  which  you  have  just 
celebrated,  creates  a  body  which  shall  twice  each  year,  to 
use  its  own  language,  "agitate  the  affairs  of  the  Common- 
wealth." I  represent  to-night  the  lineal  descendant  of  that 
body. 

They  do  not  permit  the  descendant  to  sit  but  one-quarter 
as  often  as  the  ancestor.  It  revenges  itself  by  sitting  four 
times  as  long. 

Its  paternity  is  unmistakable.  It  still  agitates  the  affairs 
of  the  commonwealth  with  inherited  aptitude  and  increasing 
vigor. 

To  this  body  the  instrument  which  represents  the  one  now 
celebrated  needs  to  be  introduced  early  in  the  session,  but 
becomes  a  familiar  acquaintance  long  before  its  close. 

That  instrument,  and  one  of  the  towns  from  which  it 
emanated,  provoke  kindred  suggestions  in  the  legislative 
mind.  We  are  cribbed,  cabined,  and  confined  by  it.  We 
press  restlessly  against  its  bars.  It  is  the  vantage  ground 
from  which  the  haughty  legal  member  is  enabled  to  rout  his 
enthusiastic  and  progressive  lay  associate  and  march  off  in 
specious  triumph. 

It  is  remorselessly  thrust  in  the  face  of  the  brave  reformer, 
and  made  in  endless  ways  obnoxious  to  the  upper  rows 
because  so  flippantly  invincible. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  75 

The  earnest  suburban  member  who  goes  to  his  General 
Court  fraught  witli  schemes  for  the  amelioration  of  the  pub- 
lic and  the  benefit  of  his  fellow  men  finds  much  to  quarrel 
with  in  it.  It  is  prone  to  stop  him  just  short  of  perpetual 
renown  upon  the  statute  book.  As  wielded  in  the  House  it 
is  a  ruthless  weapon.  It  cuts  down  those  who  think  them- 
selves most  entitled  to  a  hearing,  who  feel  prepared  to  do 
their  State  the  most  good,  who  are  the  most  ambitious. 

Speaking  for  the  lower  branch  of  the  General  Assembly, 
I  am  bound  in  truth  to  say  this  much. 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to  "  agitate  the  affairs  of  the  Common- 
wealth "  as  we  would  like  to  on  account  of  it.  While  it  may 
be  the  charter  of  your  liberties  it  is  a  galling  fetter  upon 
ours. 

But  I  ought  to  tresjoassupon  your  time  no  longer.  When 
you  have  so  kindly  invited  a  stranger  to  come  within  your 
doors,  he  should  come  in  quickly  and  shut  them,  letting  in 
as  little  wind  as  possible  in  the  process. 

In  conclusion,  therefore,  I  beg  to  say  that  having  heard 
your  city  so  eloquently  baptized  to-day  as  the  very  birthplace 
of  democracy,  the  body  which  I  represent,  constituted  as  it 
is  this  year,  feels  strangely  out  of  place  here  and  apologizes 
for  its  intrusion. 

Mr.  Robinson: 

As  you  all  know,  we  ran  along  under  the  old  charter  of  1662 
until  18 18.  I  have  claimed  for  the  founders  that  they  had  very 
high  ideas  of  religious  freedom.  I  spoke  relatively.  They  had 
ideas  far  in  advance  of  their  times.  But  they,  too,  were  in  straight- 
jackets  ;  and  we  ran  along  with  the  old  charter  until  by  and  by 
that  straight-jacket  began  to  chafe  so  much  that  it  could  not  be 
worn,  and  the  old  toleration  party  started,  and  to  that  party  we 
are  largely  indebted  for  the  charter  of  1818,  which  recognized  all 
men  as  free  in  religious  matters,  and  forbade  preferences  to  any 
sect  of  Christians,  The  old  toleration  party  and  the  Constitution 
were  ably  advocated  by  a  newspaper  published  in  this  city.  We 
have  its  editor  here  to-night.     He  has  been  an  editor  for  fifty 


76  250TII    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

years.  He  has  been  a  leader  of  his  political  party  for  a  quarter  of 
a  century.  He  has  been  offered  political  honors,  but  he  has  de- 
clined them.  He  has  raised  his  journal  to  a  position  which  may 
well  excite  envy  in  the  journals  of  the  country.  It  is  an  honor  to 
any  State.  Now  in  a  ripe  age,  but  by  no  means  in  any  feebleness, 
he  lives  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  respect  and  affection  of  all  the 
good  people  of  this  city.  I  take  great  pleasure  in  introducing 
Alfred  E.  Burr. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  J-J 


ADDRESS. 

BY  HON.  ALFRED  E.  BURR. 

I  feel  a  little  embarrassed,  Mr.  Chairman,  on  rising,  after 
the  very  flattering  remarks  that  our  chairman  has  made  with 
regard  to  myself.  I  feel  quite  undeserving  of  such  compli- 
ments as  he  has  seen  fit  to  pay  to  me  personally.  I  should 
hardly  have  been  upon  this  platform  this  evening,  fellow 
citizens,  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  two  of  my  ancestors  — 
Benjamin  Burr,  on  my  father's  side,  and  Thomas  Olcott,  on 
my  mother's  side,  came  to  Hartford  in  1635,  one  year  before 
Thomas  Hooker  came  here.  They  came  with  that  company 
from  Newtown,  who  had  a  hard  time  of  four  or  five  months 
in  getting  here,  leaving  Newtown  —  Cambridge  now  —  in 
June,  and  arriving  here,  I  think,  in  October. 

Well,  sir,  we  feel  a  pride  in  our  ancestors.  We  all  feel  a 
pride  in  the  men  whose  ability  and  foresight  inaugurated 
the  organic  law  on  which  the  United  States  government,  in 
its  federative  principles,  was  founded  in  later  years.  We 
feel  a  pride  in  the  integrity,  the  religious  principles,  the 
firmness,  the  valor,  the  intrepidity  of  those  men  who  came 
here  to  settle  this  new  country. 

All  that  can  be  said  has  been  said  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Twich- 
ell  in  his  excellent  paper  delivered  to-day.  I  have  read 
that  address  with  very  great  pleasure.  He  leaves  nothing 
for  us  to  say  with  regard  to  the  dignity,  the  statesmanship, 
the  valor  of  those  men  and  of  the  great  work  that  they  accom- 
plished. But  will  you  permit  me,  in  the  five  or  ten  minutes 
allotted  me  to-night,  to  say  a  word  on  the  other  side  — 
touching  some  of  the  faults  of  the  men  who  came  here  to 


yS  25OTH    ANNIVKRSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

settle  this  country  250  odd  years  aj^o?  I  refer  to  tlieir 
social  relations — to  something  that  has  not  perhaps  been 
alluded  to  to-day  by  the  orators  who  have  spoken  on  this 
interesting  occasion. 

Your  chairman,  for  instance,  has  spoken  of  the  great  con- 
test that  was  waged  in  181 7,  when  our  Constitution  was 
formed.  It  was  the  Toleration  party,  known  as  the  Tolera- 
tion party  —  not  a  political  party  of  the  Federalists  or  Re- 
publicans, but  a  "Toleration  party"  that  made  the  Consti- 
tution of  18 18;  and,  as  your  chairman  has  said,  the  Times 
was  established  as  a  Toleration  paper;  it  was  established  in 
order  to  secure  what  the  tolcrationists  believed  they  were 
entitled  to  —  religious  freedom.  Perhaps  that  is  too  strong 
a  term,  Mr,  Chairman.  They  wanted  to  be  relieved  from 
the  taxes  which  the  Congregational  Church  imposed  upon 
all  denominations,  unless  they  came  before  the  clerk  of  the 
society  and  took  an  oath,  or  gave  a  certificate  that  they  did 
not  belong  to  that  society.  So  the  Episcopalians,  Method- 
ists, and  Baptists,  all  joined  and  opposed  the  Presbyterians 
and  Congregationalists — for  it  came  to  that,  and  they 
secured  our  constitution,  in  which  is,  I  believe,  three  sections, 
protecting  free  religious  opinions. 

But  our  old  friends  of  250  years  ago  were  not  tolerant  ; 
they  were  not  so  tolerant  as  we  are  to-day.  I  believe  that  the 
world  moves.  I  believe  that  society  is  better  to-day  ;  that  the 
world  is  better  to-day  than  it  was  250  years  ago.  I  believe 
there  has  been  progress  in  that  time.  The  men  who  came 
here  and  ran  away  from  religious  intolerance,  were  intolerant 
themselves  on  some  occasions.  I"or  instance :  Thomas  01- 
cott  was  a  constable  about  the  time  they  founded  the  consti- 
tution that  we  are  praising  so  highly,  and  he  led  a  posse  of 
ten  assistants  against  the  Dutch  who  had  settled  a  few  years 
prior  to  the  time  when  he  came  here.  When  they  came  out 
with  their  cattle  to  plow  the  lands  on  the  hillsides  by  the 
Connecticut  River,  he  took  his  posse  of  constables,  and  with 
sticks  and  clubs  beat  the  cattle  over  their  heads  until  he 
drove  them  out  of  their  yokes ;  he  broke  their  chains  ;  he 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  79 

set  them  p.drift,  and  he  despoiled  the  fields  of  the  Dutchmen, 
and  drove  them  off,  because  they  did  not  assimilate  in  their 
religion  and  social  relations  with  his  company  of  ICnglish- 
men.  He  would  not  let  them  plow ;  he  persecuted  them, 
and  was  not  tolerant.  And  they  certainly  were  not  very 
tolerant  in  their  religious  views  at  that  time. 

Now,  if  you  will  permit  me,  Mr.  Chairman,  speaking  of 
the  social  condition  of  those  times,  I  find  in  this  little  volume 
of  the  Olcotts  an  account  of  the  death  of  the  father  of 
Thomas  Olcott's  wife,  David  Porter,  of  England.  He  came 
over  here  to  visit  his  daughter,  and  was  drowned  in  the  Con- 
necticut river;  they  buried  him,  and  there  is  an  account  re- 
ported to  the  county  court  of  the  funeral  expenses  of  that 
occasion,  which  you  will  pardon  me  for  reading,  to  show  the 
items  and  social  relations  and  state  of  society  at  that  time. 
It  was  about  the  year  1678.  The  wife  of  Thomas  Olcott 
was  still  living,  but  her  father  was  drowned  ;  and  this  is  an 
account  of  what  was  expended  on  David  Porter  for  the  re- 
covery of  his  body  and  burial : 

"  By  a  pint  of  liquor  to  those  who  dived  for  him,  i  shilling.  By  a  quart  of 
liquor  to  those  who  brought  him  home,  2  shillings.  By  i  quarts  of  wine,  a 
gallon  of  cider,  to  the  jury  of  inquest,  5  shillings." 

While  they  sat  on  the  "late  lamented,"  they  took  some- 
thing to  drink,  and  enjoyed  themselves  !  It  would  be  a  sin- 
gular fact  to  see  a  scene  of  that  kind  in  these  modern  days, 
Mr.  Chairman.     The  bill  adds,  for  the  funeral  : 

"  By  2  quarts  of  wine,  and  a  gallon  of  cider  to  the  jury.  By  8  gallons  and  3 
quarts  of  wine  for  the  funeral.  Cost,  i  pound  and  15  shillings.  By  a  barrel 
of  cider  for  the  funeral,  16  shillings.  By  i  coffin,  12  shillings.  By  a  winding 
sheet,  18  shillings." 

That  sheet  cost  more  than  the  coffin  ! 

"To  pay  for  the  grave,  5  shillings.  Total,  4  pounds,  14  shillings,  and  4 
pence.  Given  into  the  court  at  Hartford,  December  9,  1678,  by  the  son  of  my 
mother,  Mrs.  Olcott,  per  me,  Thomas  Olcott"  (son  of  the  original  Olcott). 


So  25OTII    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTIOxN    OF 

Here  was  more  money  expended  for  liquor  than  for  the 
coffin  and  grave  and  all  the  other  expenses  of  the  funeral. 
Well,  in  many  respects,  we  look  back  to  those  old  men  as 
better  than  ourselves,  and  we  are  urged  to  tread  in  the  paths 
they  trod.  But  where,  oh  where  was  the  Prohibition  jjarty 
at  that  early  day  ? 

Mr.  Robinson  : 

And  where  was  the  Temperance  Union  ? 

Mr.  Burr  : 

There  was  no  Temperance  Union,  Mr.  Chairman,  I  don't 
think  those  old  men  got  intoxicated,  but  they,  in  their  dreary 
lives  along  the  banks  of  the  river,  where  they  had  hardly 
enough  to  eat,  where  the  country  was  undeveloped,  where 
the  tomahawk  and  the  scalping  knife  were  always  flirted  in 
their  faces,  where  they  were  surrounded  by  dangers,  —  they 
"  took  a  little"  on  special  occasions  ;  for  instance,  at  funerals. 

Now,  this  old  man  Olcott  —  I  do  not  wish  to  defend  him 
on  account  of  relationship  —  he  was  a  merchant  ;  he  came 
over  here,  and  he  dealt  in  goods  and  real  estate ;  he  loaned 
money.  He  was  worth  $7,500  when  he  died  —  and  that 
was  a  great  fortune  then — more  than  $700,000  would  be 
now  ;  and  in  his  will  he  said  the  Lord  lent  him  the  money, 
but  he  got  big  interest  on  it !  And  in  the  account  of  his 
household  effects  he  had  houses  and  lands  in  Greenfield, 
in  Windsor.     lie  had  buildings  there  also, 

Mr.  Robinson  : 

No  doubt,  Judge  Hayden  will  tell  you  just  where  Green- 
field was. 

Judge  Hayden  : 

It  is  called  Bloomficld  now. 

Mr.  Burr  : 

There  he  had  two  farms  ;  and  he  had  a  prayer-book,  two 
bibles,  two  jugs,  and  a  warming-pan,  and  four  "  chayres,"  two 
candlesticks  and  snuffers.     Well,  those  were  primitive  times. 

Now,  gentlemen,  it  is  not  fair,  perhaps,  to  represent  those 
men  precisely  in  this  light.  They  were  stalwart  men  — 
strong  men  in  will  power  and  in  vindicating  what  they  be- 


Connecticut's  first  constitution.  8i 

lieved  to  be  right.  They  did  a  good  many  things  that  we 
commend.  In  their  federative  system,  in  the  confederation 
of  the  towns,  they  laid  the  foundation  of  our  Federal  gov- 
ernment, as  has  been  stated.  There  was  John  Mason,  who 
came  a  little  later.  What  did  he  do  ?  He  came  up  to  Hart- 
ford. He  had  learned  something  of  military  science  from 
the  Dutch.  He  had  been  in  their  employ  as  a  military  man. 
He  raised  ninety  men  in  Hartford,  forty  men  at  Saybrook, 
and  Uncas  gave  him  thirty  Indians,  and  he  went  around  in 
a  schooner  to  New  London.  What  did  he  do  with  all  this 
military  force .''  He  gathered  up  all  the  straw  and  dry 
hay,  and  he  piled  it  up  one  night  over  the  huts  of  the 
Pequots  ;  he  covered  their  dwellings  with  this  combustible 
matter,  and  set  it  on  fire.  When  the  Indians  came  out, 
blistered,  and  their  hair  on  fire,  he  shot  them  down  —  killed 
them  on  the  spot — then  burned  up  their  women  and  chil- 
dren !  Now  you  would  say  that  was  rather  harsh  treatment, 
wouldn't  you  .'* 
Mr.  Robinson. 

The  Indians  did  some  pretty  mean  things  first,  though. 
Mr.  Burr. 

I  don't  know  but  you  and  I  would  have  done  the  same 
thing.  Possibly  it  would  have  saved  our  scalps.  They  were, 
obliged,  in  defending  themselves,  to  resort  to  some  harsh 
measures.  I  only  mention  it  to  show  what  those  men  in 
that  day  could  do.  The  Pequots,  the  ugliest  of  the  tribes, 
were  as  bad  as  the  Mohawks — though  Uncas  was  friendly 
and  called  off  some  of  the  tribe.  He  was  an  Indian  seceder. 
The  Pequots  would  have  scalped  and  murdered  that  entire 
white  settlement  had  not  some  such  harsh  means  as  Mason 
resorted  to  been  taken  to  destroy  those  Indians.  But  I 
mention  this  incident  to  show  that  those  men,  who  risked 
everything  here,  were  ready  to  defend  their  lives,  and  to 
carry  the  war  in  among  the  Indians,  if  it  was  necessary,  and 
they  did  so.     And  they  turned  out  strong  men  who  followed 


82  250X11    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    AHOPTION    OF 

after  tliem.  We  have  felt  the  im]M-css  of  those  early  men 
all  over  this  country.  There  was  Ethan  Allen.  He  relied 
upon  "Jehovah  and  the  Continental  Congress."  They 
were  deeply  devoted  Christians,  those  men ;  pious  men  ; 
they  would  pray,  and  fight,  and  not  yield.  Allen,  he  carried 
our  institutions  up  into  Vermont.  There  they  are  to-day. 
Vermont  and  Connecticut  are  almost  alike  in  their  institu- 
tions, in  their  representation,  in  the  titles  to  their  laws. 
Connecticut  town  names  are  all  over  Vermont.  Ethan 
Allen  was  one  of  those  men  who  made  that  State  about 
what  it  was.  Then  there  was  Capt.  Wadsworth.  The 
Governor  of  New  York  sent  an  agent  here  to  govern  Con- 
necticut, in  the  early  time  ;  and  when  he  came  to  make  this 
colony  obey,  Wadsworth  told  his  drummers  to  beat  their 
drums  and  make  a  terrible  racket,  and  he  then  turned  to 
this  New  York  agent  and  said,  "  If  you  interrupt  this  drum- 
ming I  will  put  daylight  through  you  "  :  and  the  agent  w^ent 
back  to  New  York  ;  he  did  not  put  his  hand  upon  Connecti- 
cut. I  speak  of  this  as  a  little  incident  showing  the  char- 
acter of  the  men  in  those  early  days.  They  had  great 
obstacles  to  contend  with,  and  they  met  them  as  the 
obstacles  came  before  them,  and  they  triumphed  ;  and  I  now 
feel,  Mr.  Chairman,  in  view  of  what  the  orators  of  the  day 
and  the  gentlemen  who  have  spoken,  have  told  us,  very 
proud  of  what  Connecticut  has  done  in  laying  the  founda- 
tions of  a  great,  broad  government  —  a  nation  greater, 
broader,  and  better  than  any  nation  in  this  world,  with  all 
the  resources  necessary  to  support,  not  only  sixty  millions, 
but  one  hundred  millions  and  two  hundred  millions  of 
people  within  her  own  borders.  Her  fisheries,  her  iron  in 
the  mountains,  her  metals,  gold  and  silver,  her  coal  and 
natural  riches  of  every  kind — are  resources  that  no  other 
government  in  this  world  is  possessed  of;  resources  by 
which  this  people  could  sustain  themselves  if  there  was  a 
wall  around  this  country  as  high  as  that  of  China.  We  have 
this  free  government;  we  have  prosperity;  we  have  the 
great  developments  of  riches  from  ocean  to  ocean,  and  every 


Connecticut's  first  constitution.  S^ 

resource  that  a  people  may  need  and  be  proud  of  —  and  all 
this  has  grown  out  of  the  little  three  towns,  they  tell  us  ! 
And  well  may  we  be  proud  of  the  men  who  settled  in  Hart- 
ford, Windsor,  and  VVethersfield. 

Mr.  Robinson. 

We  are  fortunate  to-night  in  having  with  us  a  representative  of 
the  old  colony  —  the  old  mother  colony,  the  old  Bay  State  which 
we  all  love.  He  bears  two  honored  Connecticut  names  :  one 
Bushnell,  one  of  the  greatest  sons  of  Connecticut  or  of  America ; 
the  other  Hart.  He  represents  Harvard,  the  oldest  of  our  New 
England  Universities,  and,  while  we  feel  it  our  duty  to  whip  her 
every  year  on  the  foot-ball  field,  and  base-ball  field,  and  at  New 
London  in  the  regattas,  still  we  hold  old  Cambridge  and  Harvard 
in  the  highest  afifection  and  esteem.  I  take  pleasure  in  introduc- 
ing to-night  Prof.  Albert  Bushnell  Hart,  of  Cambridge. 


84  250T11  annivi:ksauv  of  the  auottion  of 


ADDRESS. 

BY   PROFESSOR    HART. 


Mr.  Chairman,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : 

The  chairman  has  graciously  introduced  me  as  a  repre- 
sentative of  Harvard  College ;  but  I  stand  here  to-night  also 
by  another  title,  namely,  that  of  a  lineal  descendant  of  six 
sturdy  citizens  of  Connecticut,  all  of  whom  lived  in  or  near 
Hartford  County ;  and  as  one  brought  up  in  the  wider  Con- 
necticut of  the  Ohio  Western  Reserve. 

Harvard  College  and  Cambridge  have  a  peculiar  reason 
for  interest  in  this  celebration.  The  orator  to-day,  in  words 
which  seemed  to  carve  out  before  our  eyes  and  to  set  before 
us  Thomas  Hooker  as  a  living  man,  in  words  of  eloquence 
stirring,  forceful,  the  orator  to-day  was  talking  about  a  Cam- 
bridge man  ;  and  it  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to  say,  Mr. 
Chairman,  that  had  Thomas  Hooker  waited  one  year,  instead 
of  having  founded  the  commonwealth  of  Connecticut,  he 
might  have  been  the  first  president  of  Harvard  College. 
And  Harvard  has  another  reason  for  feeling  grateful  to  those 
who  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  came  together  to  form 
an  organic  law  for  their  infant  commonwealth :  for,  shortly 
after  this  time,  the  little  college  became  very  much  embar- 
rassed ;  there  was  distress  so  great  that  they  appealed  to 
the  towns  of  Massachusetts  and  of  the  other  colonies  to 
help  them  ;  and  there  stands  to  this  day  upon  the  treasurer's 
book  of  receipts  an  item  which  shows  the  sort  of  contribu- 
tion which  came  to  them.  It  reads  thus  :  "Received,  a  goat 
30  shillings,  of  the  plantation  of  Watertowne  rate,  which 


Connecticut's  first  constitution.  85 

died."  At  that  time  Harvard  College  appealed  also  to  the 
frontier  settlements  in  Connecticut,  and  we  find  that  those 
settlements  out  of  their  poverty  generously  subscribed  and 
brought  a  contribution  of  "corn,  for  the  poor  scholars  in 
Cambridge."  The  gratitude  of  Harvard  College  was  ex- 
pressed for  upwards  of  sixty  years  in  a  practical  way  by 
educating  Connecticut  boys  to  fill  the  places  of  the  Hookers 
and  Davenports  as  they  passed  away.  Then  came  Yale 
College,  which  took  up  that  work,  and  has  well  carried  it 
through.  The  fathers  of  the  Massachusetts  men  and  of  the 
Connecticut  men  shared  alike  in  the  hardships  and  sacrifices 
of  those  early  days,  and  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  men 
share  alike  in  the  triumphs  and  prosperity  of  the  present 
day ;  for  the  success  of  Yale  College,  and  of  Wesleyan  and 
Trinity,  is  the  success  of  sound  learning  and  good  education, 
and  it  is  a  success  in  which  we  of  Massachusetts  take  as 
much  pleasure  and  pride  as  you  of  Connecticut. 

And  now  let  me  turn  to  the  other  side  of  the  great 
constituency  which  I  represent.  I  have  spoken  for  the 
East :  let  me  say  a  word  for  the  West.  There  are  various 
kinds  of  constitutions.  I  presume  you  will  know  the  classic 
story  about  an  honorable  member  from  the  State  of  New 
York  who  approached  Theodore  Roesevelt  in  the  New  York 
Legislature  a  few  years  ago,  and  asked  his  support  for  a  cer- 
tain measure.  Mr.  Roesevelt  said  :  "  I  cannot ;  it  would  be 
unconstitutional."  "  Ah,"  said  the  Hon.  Tim  So-and-So, 
"but  what  is  a  little  thing  like  the  constitution  between 
friends  }  "  A  Frenchman  once  undertook  to  prepare  a  con- 
stitution for  his  country  in  two  articles.  "Article  ist.  All 
Frenchmen  shall  be  virtuous.  Article  2d.  All  French- 
men shall  be  happy."  The  first  article  has  never  been  com- 
pletely carried  out;  and,  judging  from  the  reports  of  the 
Panama  Canal,  the  second  article  is  not  fulfilled  in  any 
better  fashion.  Another  Frenchman,  still  living,  Rochefort, 
cmh*>died  his  constitution  also  in  two  articles.  "  Article 
1st:  Nobody  must  do  anything.  Article  2d:  Nobody 
enforces  the  forejroin^:  article." 


86  25OTH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

The  frartiers  of  the  organic  law  for  these  three  common- 
wealths were  not  deceived  by  any  such  illusions  as  to  the 
character  of  human  nature  and  the  probable  virtue  of  the 
whole  community,  nor  were  they  inclined  to  favor  anarchy. 
The  constitution  which  we  are  discussing,  which  we  have 
heard  read  to-day,  whose  history  we  have  heard  so  well 
described,  that  constitution  contains  principles  of  good 
order  and  common  sense,  for  which  every  Western  State 
should  be  grateful,  because  every  Western  State  has  incor- 
porated them.  The  vine  which  you  see  upon  the  shield  of 
Connecticut  is  one  of  those  running  vines,  which  puts  down 
a  shoot;  it  takes  root,  and  that  puts  down  another;  and  so 
the  constitution  adopted  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  is 
traveling  from  State  to  State,  and  from  community  to  com- 
munity, throughout  the  West.  The  men  who  framed  that 
constitution  were  not  framing  it  for  Windsor  and  Hartford 
and  Wethcrsfield  :  they  were  making  a  constitution  for 
Ohio  and  Iowa  and  Dakota.  In  the  name  of  the  mother 
State,  which  sent  out  the  first  colonies,  and  in  the  name 
of  these  daughter  States  of  the  West,  which  owe  so  much  to 
the  Connecticut  spirit,  as  well  as  to  the  Connecticut  Con- 
stitution, I  most  heartily  congratulate  you  upon  this  two 
hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  a  great  occasion. 

Mr.  Robinson  : 

We  have  two  more  speakers,  both  of  whom  will  interest  us. 
First,  one  for  this  old  town  of  Hartford,  which  for  255  years,  as 
Newtown  and  Hartford,  as  town  and  city,  has  been  a  fountain  of 
intelligence,  benevolence,  freedom,  and  sense,  which  is  now  a 
model  city,  and  which  I  may  say  in  all  its  municipal  history  has 
never  been  invaded  by  rings,  by  corrupt  judges,  or  corrupt  ofificials. 
We  are  all  proud  of  it ;  and  we  are  glad  to  see  here  its  first  execu- 
tive officer,  his  Honor  Mayor  Root,  and  shall  be  happy  to  hear  a 
word  from  him  to-night.     (Applause.) 


Connecticut's  first  constitution.  ^y 


ADDRESS. 

BY  MAYOR  ROOT. 

Mr.  Chairman,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : 

As  we  look  back  on  the  line  of  history  for  250  years,  and 
recall  the  early  struggles,  privations,  and  hardships  of  those 
noble  men  who  guided  the  destinies  of  that  colony,  which 
included  Hartford,  Windsor,  and  Wethersftcld,  and  whose 
lofty  genius  gave  birth  to  a  constitution  of  self-government, 
and,  beginning  from  it,  during  two  centuries  and  a  half  has 
grown  a  fearless  and  prosperous  commonwealth,  well  may  we 
rejoice  and  take  pride  in  celebrating  this  event,  which  is  the 
foundation  of  our  unparalleled  development,  —  not  in  wealth 
alone,  but  in  intelligence  and  virtue.  The  men  of  that  colony 
have  passed  away,  but  the  principles  as  embodied  in  that 
first  constitution  have  been  perpetuated  by  a  fitting  ancestry 
whom  you  represent.  Many  of  those  men  were  leaders  ; 
and  their  examples  live  on,  arousing  and  influencing  the  liv- 
ing. All  remote  history  is  imperishable.  The  same  spirit 
which  animated  the  people  of  that  period  was  handed  down 
to  the  Revolution  ;  and  later  on,  during  our  own  time,  in  that 
great  struggle  in  the  defence  of  a  free  government  and  the 
maintenance  of  the  Union,  these  three  towns,  imbued  with 
the  spirit  of  their  forefathers,  loyal  and  patriotic,  sent  into 
the  field  in  the  late  war  4,500  brave  and  determined  soldiers, 
and  on  nearly  all  the  great  battle-fields  they  were  repre- 
sented. We  have  reason  to  feel  grateful  to  those  early  set- 
tlers who  found  their  way  to  and  landed  upon  the  banks  of  the 
Connecticut  ;  and  we  to-day  arc  enjoying  the  privileges  of  a 
prosperous  community,  with  all  the  advantages  which  com- 
fort, happiness,  educational  advantages,  and  charitable  insti- 
tutions and  cfood  2;overnment  afford. 


88  25oth  anniversary  of  the  adoption  of 

Mr.  Robinson  : 

We  have  letters  here  to-night,  but  it  is  too  late  to  read  them. 
They  will  be  printed  with  the  pamphlet  which  will  give  an  account 
of  the  occasion.  They  are  from  distinguished  gentlemen,  our 
guests,  guests  of  the  society.  We  regret  also  the  absence  of  his 
Honor  the  Lieutenant-Governor  of  the  State.  We  are  proud  to  see 
that  the  Executive  of  the  State  is  here,  and  he  has  kindly  served 
us  to-day  by  reading  the  Constitution ;  and  our  evening  will  be 
concluded  by  an  address,  and  our  meeting  would  not  be  charac- 
teristic or  proper  if  we  did  not  hear  from  him,  —  from  the  distin- 
guished Senator  of  Connecticut,  loyal  to  the  old  memories, 
devoted  to  all  progress,  good  man,  good  soldier,  good  citizen  — 
Joseph  R.  Hawley. 


Connecticut's  first  constitution.  89 


ADDRESS. 

BY  HON.  JOSEPH  R.  HAWLEY,  U.S.S. 

[Reported  in  Hart/ord  Couraut,  Januarj-  25tli.] 

General  Hawley  was  greeted  by  hearty  applause.  He 
said  that  after  witnessing  their  enthusiastic  reception  of 
Mr.  Burr,  he  felt  that  there  was  hope  for  him.  Mr.  Burr 
may  have  made  mistakes  in  politics  —  at  all  events  in  his 
prophecies  sometimes  —  but  outside  of  politics,  in  every 
movement  for  the  good  of  the  community,  nobody  can  find 
fault  with  the  Hon.  A.  E.  Burr.     (Applause.) 

General  Hawley  remarked  that  he  felt  a  thousand  times 
repaid  for  coming  on  to  witness  this  celebration.  The 
worship  of  Connecticut's  history  had  been  a  passion  with 
him.  He  had  known  nothing  concerning  the -^preparations 
for  this  celebration,  but  had  hoped  that  everything  would  be 
well  done.  And  now  he  felt  like  one  who  has  partaken 
of  an  abundant  meal.  He  had  been  more  than  satisfied 
with  Mr.  Twichell's  eloquent  oration. 

Down  there  [referring  to  his  life  in  the  U.  S.  Senate], 
among  thirty-seven  rivals,  he  had  always  asserted  that  no 
State  has  a  history  which  can  compare  with  that  of  Con- 
necticut. Is  there  a  nation  like  it }  Look  at  France, 
sometimes  a  republic,  sometimes  a  monarchy ;  who  can 
count  the  changes  in  her  government  .'*  And  Great 
Britain  has  changed  more  in  50  years  than  Connecticut 
in  250.  It  was  true,  as  stated,  that  Mr.  Twichell  had 
not  left  much  for  others  to  say,  but  there  were  some 
matters  of  which  he  (Hawley)  was  in  the  habit  of  boasting, 
which  Mr.  Twichell  did  not  allude  to,  because,  for  one 
reason,  they  were  too  modern.  A  State  may  be  visited 
by  a  flood  or  an  epidemic ;  the  first  thing  is  to  introduce 
12 


QO  25OTII    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE     ADOPTION    OF 

a  resolution  in  Congress  granting  national  aid.  Why,  a 
State,  imperial  in  its  domain,  had  a  little  drouth,  and  a 
bill  was  actually  passed  granting  money  with  which  to  buy 
seed  corn.  Is  there  anything  of  that  kind  in  Connecticut  ? 
And  so  with  pleuro-pncumonia  and  with  epidemics  among 
the  people.  The  Connecticut  answer  to  the  requests  for 
government  aid  is,  "  What  have  you  done  for  yourselves  ? 
Where  is  your  State  board  of  health  ? "  And  then  States 
come  begging  in  aid  of  education,  to  which  we  have  always 
considered  it  our  first  duty  as  a  State  to  attend.  Then 
there  is  the  matter  of  a  military  force,  ready  for  emergen- 
cies ;  many  States  have  none  at  all ;  here  is  a  little  force 
of  2,500  men,  all  thoroughly  drilled,  with  guns  and  all  other 
equipments,  ready  to  take  the  cars  at  a  moment's  notice. 

General  Hawley  continued  by  saying  that  there  were 
certain  peculiar  views  in  which  he  delighted.  He  liked 
to  see  how  our  young  men  have  gone  west,  and  have  always 
been  certain  to  come  to  the  front  as  leaders.  They  have 
learned  how  to  hold  meetings ;  can  take  the  chair,  appoint 
committees,,  and  decide  points  of  order.  He  had  been 
taunted  in  Congress  with  strikes,  but  fortunately  here  we 
have  had  but  little  of  these.  One  reason  for  this  is  because 
there  is  no  want  or  grievance  which  cannot  find  relief.  It 
is  repression  that  makes  trouble  and  strikes,  and  rebellions. 
After  alluding  to  the  curious  town  organization  of  Connecti- 
cut he  spoke  of  the  resemblance  between  the  constitution  of 
Connecticut  and  that  of  the  United  States. 

He  closed  by  saying  that  he  was  rejoiced,  he  was  glad  of 
this  meeting,  and  he  hoped  that  there  would  be  in  all  our 
public  schools  a  volume  containing  the  history  of  Connecti- 
cut, written  without  political  bias,  showing  its  fidelity  to  the 
fundamental  principles  of  civil  liberty,  for  the  instruction  of 
those  who  are  coming  to  our  shores  from  foreign  countries 
and  who  are  born  here  of  foreign  parentage,  and  whom  we 
must  teach  to  become  children  of  Connecticut.  He  ex- 
tended the  regrets  of  Senators  Piatt,  Hoar,  and  Evarts  at 
their  inability  to  be  present. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  QI 


LETTERS    OE    REGRET. 


Froi\i  Edward  E.  Hale. 

.    RoxiiURY,  Mass.,  Jan.  21,  1889. 

My  Dear  Sir,  —  I  regret  extremely  that  I  am  not  able  to  ac- 
cept the  invitation  of  the  Connecticut  Historical  Society  for 
Thursday  evening,  January  24th. 

The  occasion  is  one  most  interesting  to  every  student  of 
American  History,  and  I  am  very  glad  that  the  society  has 
arranged  to  recognize  it  by  appropriate  services. 

Has  your  attention  been  called  to  the  interesting  notice  which 
Mr.  Bryce  makes  on  the  adoption  of  the  first  constitution  of  Con- 
necticut, which  he  says,  I  suppose  rightly,  is  the  first  written  con- 
stitution in  the  history  of  the  world. 

Very  truly  yours, 

Edward  E.  Hai.e. 


From  Robert  C.  Winthrop. 

Boston,  Mass.,  Jan.  7,  1889. 

J.  Hammond  Trumbull,  Esq.,  LL.D.,  President. 

My  Dear  Sir,  —  I  am  greatly  honored  and  obliged  by  the  invi- 
tation for  the  24th  inst.  It  would  afford  me  pleasure  to  attend 
the  commemoration  of  so  interesting  an  anniversary.  But  I  am 
constrained  to  deny  myself,  and  can  only  offer  my  thanks  and  re- 
grets to  the  Connecticut  Historical  Society.  Believe  me, 
Respectfully  and  truly  yours, 

Robert  C.  Winthror. 


92  250Tn    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

From  Dr.  George  E.  Ellis. 

Boston,  Mass.,  Jan.  21.  1SS9. 
To  THE  Secretary  of  the  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

Dear  Sir,  —  Did  my  engagements  permit  I  should  have  ii^uch 
satisfaction  in  accepting  your  kind  invitation,  by  participating  in 
the  commemoration  of  the  adoption  of  the  First  Constitution  of 
Connecticut.  ]!ut  I  am  compelled  to  deny  myself  the  pleasure 
of  it. 

Sincerely  yours, 

George  E.  Ellis. 


From  Hon.  George  F.  Hoar. 

Washington,  D.  C,  Jan.  21,  1SS9. 
To  the  Secretary  of  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

My  Dear  Sir,  —  I  am  very  sorry  that  my  public  engagements 
prevent  me  from  taking  part  in  the  celebration  of  the  two  hun- 
dred and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution 
of  Connecticut,  January  24,  i88g. 

No  public  event  except  the  planting  of  my  own  State  at  Ply- 
mouth could  be  nearer  to  my  heart  than  the  founding  of  Connec- 
ticut, in  whose  history  I  feel  a  pride  scarcely  less  than  filial. 

Your  learned  and  famous  society  will  fitly  perform  the  duty  of 
commemorating  the  event  of  the  adoption  of  that  constitution, 
which  was  so  important  in  the  history  of  constitutional  liberty. 
I  shall  read  the  report  of  the  proceedings  with  great  interest. 

I  am  faithfully  yours, 

George  F.  Hoar. 

From  John  Bach  McMaster. 

Philadelphia,  Penn.,  Jan.  22,  1889. 
To  THE  Secretary  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

Dear  Sir,  —  I  am  much  honored  by  the  kind  invitation  of  the 
Connecticut  Historical  Society  to  be  present,  on  the  afternoon  of 
Thursday  next,  at  the  commemoratory  exercises,  and  regret,  very 
sincerely,  that  college  duties  will  make  it  impossible  to  attend. 

Very  truly, 

John  Bach  McMaster. 


connfxticuts  first  constitution.  93 

From  D.  Williams  Patterson. 

Newark  Valley,  N.  V.,  Jan.  22,  1SS9. 
The  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

I  regret  exceedingly  my  inability  to  meet  the  Connecticut  His- 
torical Society  in  Hartford  on  Thursday,  24th  inst. 

I  have  now  lived  so  long  in  the  State  of  New  York,  where  the 
town  is  as  powerless  as  a  wax  doll  in  the  grip  of  the  county,  that 
I  would  greatly  enjoy  a  few  words  in  favor  of  the  town  as  the 
foundation  of  civil  government. 

I  hope  everything  will  be  thoroughly  enjoyed  by  the  members 
and  guests  of  the  society,  and  I  will  look  for  my  pleasure  at  the 
printed  reports. 

Sincerely, 

D.  Williams  Patterson. 


From   Justin  Winsor. 

74  Sparks  Street,  Camf-ridge. 

Mr.  Justin  Winsor  regrets  that  a  previous  engagement  prevents 
his  accepting  your  kind  invitation  to  your  anniversary  on 
Thursday,  24th  January,  1889. 


From  Judge  W.  S.  Shurtleff. 

Springfield,  Mass.,  Jan.  21,  1S89. 

Dear  Sir,  —  I  am  complimented  by  an  invitation  to  be  present 
at  the  ceremonies  in  commemoration  of  the  adoption,  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  ago,  of  the  first  constitution  of  your  State, 
and  should  be  very  glad,  but  shall  be  unable,  to  attend  on  an  oc- 
casion certain  to  be  interesting  to  all  of  your  society  and  your 
guests,  and  surely  to  be  pleasant  to  me,  not  only  because  of  the 
intellectual  feast  to  be  furnished  and  the  intercourse  to  be  enjoyed 
with  many  old  friends,  but  because  I,  as  a  "son  of  Yale,"  cherish 
memories  of  my  Connecticut  life  that  are  among  the  most  pleas- 
ant of  my  amassing. 

Born  in  Vermont,  educated,  for  the  most  important  part,  in 
Connecticut,  and  a  long  time  resident  in  Massachusetts,  I  am  a 
loyal  New  Englander,  naturally;  but,  also,  by  conviction,  result- 


94  25OTII    ANN'IVERSARV    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

ing  from  historical  study  and  reflection,  I  have  come  to  regard 
each  and  every  of  the  States  that  form  New  England  as  excep- 
tional communities.  State  by  State,  as  stars  whose  light,  long 
seeking  through  space  its  revelation,  appear  to  astronomical  ob- 
servation, New  England  shone  out  upon  the  throne-burdened 
world  —  the  constellation  of  Liberty,  forever  to  be,  in  the  politi- 
cal heavens  (the  two  last  words  need  not  be  incompatible  com- 
panions)—  a  monition  to  the  oppressor  and  a  "  sign  "  of  hope  to 
the  oppressed  —  Connecticut  as  lustrous  as  any  of  the  cluster. 

The  boundary  lines  between  us  are  only  on  the  maps  —  the 
territorial  division  is  only  for  convenience  of  local  government. 
(Oh  !  resolve  away  the  recollection  pf  that  old  disputed  line  !) 
The  memory  of  our  united  struggles  #nd  common  success  in  good 
causes  should  force  us  to  forget  that  the  surveyor's  lines  exist, 
and  to  determine  that  they  shall  not  separate  us  socially.  Suc- 
cess to  your  celebration.  Surcease  to  State  jealousies  and  in- 
crease to  New  England/j-zw  in  New  England  and  the  world  over, 
is  the  wish  of 

Yours,  very  gratefully,  for  the  courtesy  extended  by  your  bid- 
der to  your  feast, 

William  S.  Shurtleff. 


From  Edward  Channing. 

Cambridge,  Mass,  Jan.  23,  1SS9. 
To  THE  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

GeJitlemen, —  I  regret  it  is  not  in  my  power  to  accept  your  kind 
invitation  to  take  part  in  your  commemoration  of  the  first  consti- 
tution of  Connecticut.  The  passing  of  the  preamble  and  eleven 
orders  by  the  freemen  of  Connecticut  two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago,  forms  an  important  landmark  in  our  constitutional  history. 
In  these  days  especially,  when  the  tendency  is  toward  centraliza- 
tion, it  is  well  to  go  back  to  the  old  time  and  see  with  what 
jealous  care  our  fathers  safeguarded  the  rights  and  liberties  of 
communities.  The  joining  together  of  the  three  towns  also  forms 
an  important  epoch  in  the  history  of  federation. 

Again  thanking  you  for  your  invitation,  I  remain 

Very  truly  yours, 

Edward  Channing. 


CONNECTICUT  S    FIRST    CONSTITUTION.  95 

From   Prof.  Alexander  Johnston. 

Princeton,  N.  J.,  Jan.  21,  18S9. 
The  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

Gentlemen.,  —  A  lingering  convalescence  leaves  me  unable  to 
comply  with  your  summons  to  meet  on  Thursday  of  this  week 
with  others  who  believe  they  see  peculiar  importance  in  the  politi- 
cal history  of  Connecticut,  to  celebrate  the  two  hundred  and 
fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  formation  of  the  first  constitution  of 
that  commonwealth.  The  democratic  nature  of  that  constitution 
has  long  been  insisted  upon  ;  and  the  untiring  acuteness  of  one 
of  your  own  distinguished  members,  Dr.  J.  Hammond  Trumbull, 
has  given  Thomas  Hooker  his  proper  place  as  master  of  the 
work.  I  have  stated  elsewhere  the  grounds  for  my  own  belief 
that  the  sound  political  principles  of  a  people  trained  for  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  under  that  constitution  resulted,  in  1787, 
in  giving  its  bi-cameral  character,  one  of  its  most  essential  fea- 
tures, to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  The  seed  planted 
by  Thomas  Hooker  has  given  us  not  only  the  three  vines  of  Con- 
necticut, but  the  statelier  plant  of  the  Union,  With  many  thanks 
for  your  invitation,  I  am 

Sincerely  yours, 

Alexander  Johnston. 


From  Ex-Gov.  Henry  B.  Harrison. 

New  Haven,  Jan.  22,  1SS9. 

Dear  Sir.,  —  This  morning  I  received  your  letter  of  the  20th 
inst.,  inviting  me  to  take  part  in  the  proposed  commemoration  of 
the  great  act  done  at  Hartford  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  in 
the  establishment  of  the  first  formal  written  constitution  of  gov- 
ernment ever  made  in  America. 

If  it  were  possible,  I  should  be  most  happy  to  unite  with  my 
fellow  citizens  in  celebrating  that  event  —  so  memorable  in  the  his- 
tory of  Connecticut,  and  so  signal  in  the  history  of  constitutional 
government  among  nations.  Circumstances  beyond  my  control, 
however,  compel  me  to  decline,  with  the  greatest  regret,  your 
courteous  invitation. 

Very  respectfully  and  truly  yours, 

H.  B.  Harrison. 


96  25OTII    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THE    ADOPTION    OF 

From  Dr.  Noah  Porter. 

New  Haven,  Conn.,  J;m.  22,  1889. 
To  Frank  B.  Gay,  Esq.,  Secretary  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

My  Dear  Sir,  —  I  hope  to  be  present  at  the  exercises  of  the 
Connecticut  Historical  Society  on  the  24th  inst.,  but  my  voice  is 
for  the  present  in  so  uncertain  a  condition  that  I  dare  not  under- 
take to  make  even  a  ten  minutes'  address.  With  thanks  for  the 
invitation. 

I  am,  very  sincerely,  yours, 

Noah  Portkr. 


From  President  Geo.  Williamson  Smith. 

Hartford,  Conn.,  Jan.  22,  1SS9. 
Mr.  Frank  B.  Gay,  Secretary  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

My  Dear  Sir,  —  The  invitation  to  the  reception  of  the  Conecti- 
cut  Historical  Society  on  Thursday  evening,  is  received  with 
thanks,  I  have  other  engagements  for  the  evening,  but  will  try  to 
be  present  part  of  the  time  ;  I  regret,  however,  that  I  shall  not  be 
able  to  make  a  speech. 

Respectfully,  your  obedient  servant, 

Geo.  Williamson  Smith. 


From  Bishop  John  Williams. 

Middletown,  Jan.  21,  18S9. 
My  Dear  Mr.  Hoadly. 

Sir,  —  I  have  received  an  invitation  to  be  present  at  the  two 
hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  adoption  of  the  first  con- 
stitution of  our  State. 

I  am  sorry  not  to  be  able  to  be  present,  for  it  is  a  most  interest- 
ing and  important  occasion,  but  my  engagements  are  such,  that 
although  I  am  to  be  in  Hartford  at  a  later  hour  that  day,  I  can- 
not well  reach  there  before  the  services  would  be  over, 

I  do  not  know  that  any  reply  is  expected,  but  I  should  like  to 
make  some  one  interested  understand  that  I  appreciate  fully  the 
courtesy  of  the  invitation,  and  am  sorry  not  to  be  able  to  accept  it. 

Faithfully  yours, 

J.  Williams. 


connecticut  s  first  constitution.  97 

From  Senator  Platt. 

Washington,  D.  C,  Jan.  21,  1889. 
My  Dear  Sir, —  1  fear  that  I  shall  be  unable  to  attend  the  cele- 
bration on  the  24th ;  voting  on  the  tariff  may  not  be  concluded, 
and  whether  it  is  or  not,  the  question  of  what  is  to  be  done  with 
the  omnibus  bill,  which  has  now  come  over  to  the  Senate,  is  upon 
me  with  all  its  perplexities.  I  regret  this,  for  I  want  to  come  for 
my  own  enjoyment,  very  much.  It  may  be  that  I  can  make  a  Hy- 
ing trip,  but  I  fear  not. 

Very  truly  yours, 
O.  H.  Platt. 

From  Ex-Gov.  Charles  R.  Ingersoll. 

New  Haven,  Jan.  22,  1S89. 
Frank  B.  Gay,  Esq.,  Secretary  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

Dear  Sir,  —  I  regret  that  it  will  be  impossible  for  me  to  attend 
the  meeting  of  the  Connecticut  Historical  Society  in  commemora- 
tion of  the  first  constitution  of  Connecticut,  to  which  1  have 
received  your  kind  inyitation. 

The  occasion  is  one  in  which  I  should  be  very  glad  to  partici- 
pate if  my  engagements  would  permit  me  to  do  so. 
With  thanks  for  your  courtesy,  I  am 

Very  truly  yours, 

C.  R.  Ingersoll. 


From  Judge  Richard  A.  Wheeler. 

Stonington,  Jan.  22,  1889. 
The  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

Messrs.  —  Accept  my  sincere  thanks  for  your  kind  invitation  to 
attend  and  participate  in  the  commemoration  of  the  two  hundred 
and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  adoption  of  the  first  constitution  of 
Connecticut,  on  the  twenty-fourth  day  of  the  present  month. 

Be  assured  that  it  would  afford  me  the  highest  satisfaction  to  be 
present  and  enjoy  the  anniversary,  but  the  present  condition  of 
my  health  is  such  that  I  must  forego  the  pleasure. 

Gratefully  appreciating  your  cordial  invitation,  and  with  assur- 
ance of  high  regard,  I  remain 

Yours  very  truly, 

Richard  A.  Wheeler. 

13 


98  Connecticut's  first  constitution. 

From  Hon.  John  M.  JIall. 

Hartford,  Jan.  22,  1SS9. 
Frank  B.  Gay,  Esq.,  Secretary  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

My  Dear  Sir,  —  Your  kind  invitation  to  be  present  at  the  even- 
ing session  of  the  celebration  of  the  two  hundred  and  fiftieth 
anniversary  of  the  adoption  of  the  first  constitution  is  duly  re- 
ceived. I  regret  that  I  shall  be  unable  to  be  present  in  the  even- 
ing, owing  to  other  peremptory  engagements  Friday. 

Trusting  that  the  celebration  may  be  a  success,  I  remain 

Yours  very  truly, 

John  M.  Hall. 


Mr.  Robinson  : 

Now,  we  are  not  too  old  to  give  three  cheers  for  the  founders 
of  the  constitution,  and  then  the  band  will  give  us  "America." 

(Cheers  and  music  given,  and  meeting  adjourned.) 


'-1  THE  LIBRARY 

\\  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

'  «  Santa  Barbara 

THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW. 


50m-3,'68(H9242a8)9482 


